Can You Marry Your Cousin In New York State

Modern relationships have been pretty hard to maintain lately. With all of the distractions of the current times we live in, it can be quite difficult to find a good mate to spend the rest of your life with. One of the hardest parts of that is finding someone you're compatible with.

They often say that it's best to be friends before you become lovers, but does that same concept apply to being family members before lovers? While it's frowned upon nowadays, it's not uncommon for people who are related to each other to be married. Even though most people look down on it now, there is a lot of history of cousins marrying each other in the United States and around the world.

There was a potential law pending in the Florida legislature that would put an end to cousin marriage once and for all in the Sunshine State, but HB 733 did not have enough votes to pass, and cousins from Tallahassee to Miami Beach are free to get married.

Can Cousins In New York State Get Married?

When you hear that Florida didn't pass a law banning cousin marriage, you might think "of course Florida did that," and you might feel that those of us in the Empire State are so far advanced that we would never do something like that here.

You, of course, would be wrong. New York State, like Florida and at least 16 other states, allows first cousins to get married.

According to Legal Match, there are a few familiar relationships that are barred from marriage, such as parent-child and sibling marriages. But you are wide open to marrying your first cousin all day.

Not only can you marry your first cousin in the Empire State, but New York is also the only state that allows a type of marriage called avunculate marriages. That is: uncles and aunts are free to marry their nieces and nephews.

While I think we all love our family, maybe it's not such a good idea to marry them.