Marriage question

Can a Japanese woman marry 2 different man? My brother is married to Japanese woman only in military with no record in japan court that now trying to divorce his wife for the couple yrs & now he recieve information that his wife is said to be married to a difderent man while their divorce is not yet done. Is it allowed in Japan law? If not, what can my brother do about this that maybe can help him with his divorce?

If she was already married, they never legally married in the first place and there is no need for a divorce. I have no idea what "marrying only in military" means. Is there a country that has a legal record of the "marriage"? If so, get that annulled by showing she was already married (normally, she should have conferred a certificate of not being married in the first place for the marriage to have been legally accepted by a country).

Japanese citizens do not need to produce such a certificate to get married in Japan; the koseki system supposedly takes care of this. If the first marriage was not registered in Japan, as far as Japan is concerned it does not exist. Consult a lawyer.

@88Tim My brother was the first husband, they got married in Japan but only at the base & his wife never did file the record so there's no record in Japan or here in US so that's what I meant with married only in the military coz that's the only place they have a record.

Judged from the situation as you describe here:
under the law of Japan, that Japanese woman did not get legally married to your brother, and she was eligible for marriage;
this is never a case as you say where a woman marries to two different men;
your brother have never been her legal husband under the law of Japan.

A possible problem is how the legal effect of the "marriage only in the military" is.
Still it seems, unless she explained to your brother wrongly that their marriage was legally notified to a mayor (of a municipality in Japan), he has no good reason to raise objection against her for her getting legally married (under the law of Japan) to another man.

I suppose your brother had better inquire of a Legal Affairs Bureau how the situation actually is and what he can or cannot do.
However, the website of Legal Affairs Bureaus has no English language edition.

Is your brother now in Japan?
If so, hopefully Japan Legal Support Center may help him.
http://www.houterasu.or.jp/en/index.html

Let me rewrite, for clarification, the first part of my previous response.

Judged from the situation as you describe here:
under the law of Japan, that Japanese woman did not get legally married to your brother, and she was eligible for marriage when she got married to another man;
this is never a case as you say where a woman marries two different men;
your brother has never been her legal husband under the law of Japan.

Ok, now I understand the initial question.

In that case, as far as Japan is concerned she was never married.

I have no idea what is the legal value of a record by the military base, but I would even say they were never legally married to begin with (or at least not registered as such); they just had a ceremony.

It seems rather strange to me that this marriage was never reported to either authorities.\


Anyway, to answer the question: no, Japanese law does not allow multiple husbands/wives, but Japan doesn't know she is married. Second, I doubt she even is married now (legally). Then how to divorce if you were never married? Ask the base, since apparently they are the only ones with a record.

To add to the above info. A military base is the home bases soil. So a US military base is USA owned land. So you'll probably find their marriage is registered in the USA (if the did the paperwork). But clearly not registered in Japan, (as you know they didn't do the paper work).

So a- she probably couldn't get remarried in USA,
And b- has no issues remarrying in Japan.

@hakata14 No marriage record here in US too, my brother already checked in court in the state where we we're born & raised like what he was advised to make sure that he's not missing anything on the divorce process his trying to do. Coz if my brother did find record of their marriage here he could've filed the divorce papers through the court here.

So in the eyes of the law (in both counties), he was never married.

Tell him to put rhe past to bed and stop spending money on lawyers. haha