Basic Trope: A couple tries to get married, only for one of them to find out that they're already legally married to someone else.
- Straight: Alice and Bob get drunk in Vegas, and decide on a drunken whim to get married by an Elvis Impersonator as a joke. Years later, Bob is engaged to Carol, and when he goes to get the marriage license, finds out that his drunken Vegas wedding to Alice was (and still is) legally binding after all.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob had an amicable divorce over 20 years ago, and have barely spoken to each other since the divorce was finalized, unless it was purely logistical and necessary. Bob goes to get his marriage license so he can marry his new fiancee, Carol, and finds out that because of a clerical mix-up, he is still legally married to Alice.
- Bob is declared Legally Dead following a terrible cruise ship accident, and Alice tries to marry Charles over a decade later. Bob was really just stranded on Farside Island, and only just now made it home.
- Downplayed: ???
- Justified: One half of the couple has been declared Legally Dead, after having been missing for so long, only for it to be discovered that they are alive and well.
- One or both of them didn't fill out the paperwork correctly for the divorce.
- One or both of them assumed that since they were having a religious wedding ceremony, that would automatically be a legally binding marriage.
- Alice and Bob's religion considers civil divorce and religious divorce/annulment to be two completely separate things.
- Alice and Bob were so drunk, they didn't realize that the marriage license they signed in Vegas was a real marriage license.
- Alice wanted to divorce Bob, but Bob is a Foot-Dragging Divorcee.
- Inverted: Alice and Bob have been Happily Married for many years and find out that (due to a technicality) their marriage, while the wedding indeed took place, is not any more legally binding than it would have been if they had just shacked up together or not bothered with the legal aspects.
- Subverted: Alice and Bob are legally divorced.
- Double Subverted: At least in terms of civil law. They got married in the Catholic Church, in order to please their very traditional families. So that means that while they are civilly divorced, they are still considered married in the eyes of the Catholic Church, and the priest tells Bob that he cannot perform a wedding ceremony for Bob and Carol unless Bob were to get a church annulment.
- Parodied: ???
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Alice and Bob got all of their i's dotted and all of their t's crossed when it came to divorce.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: Alice and Bob decide it would be fun to tell their friends they got married, and then reveal that it was all a prank.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: They then think over the legal and tax implications, and decide to just cover the toilet seat with plastic instead.
- Bob and Carol decide that rather than get married in the Catholic church, they will just have a civil ceremony on the beach, officiated by a justice of the peace, a nondenominational minister, or a friend who can get a temporary ordination and license to perform their wedding. So they don't have to worry about Bob's previous marriage to Alice complicating things, as long as he has the divorce decree from the civil divorce (which he does).
- When Bob and Alice get their civil divorce, they also make sure to get an annulment from the Catholic church, leaving both of them free to remarry within the church if they feel so inclined.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
