Such was the case of Orfeo Pelligrini, who came to this country and took a new wife when his children in Italy were nearly grown.  His Italian family came to America through their own efforts a few years later, and Orfeo found that he had underestimated the character of his eldest son, who traced his father, had him arrested and taken to the city where his original family was living.  Orfeo, now forcibly reunited to the wife of his bosom, walks softly under the threat of bigamy proceedings, while the “American” wife refuses to take any action on the ground that “he didn’t go away from me of his own wish, and why should I put him behind the bars?”

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Of an altogether more simple mental make-up was the Slovak laborer who brought his pregnant “American wife” and two children to the district office of a charity organization society, saying that the relatives in Europe of Anna, his first wife, had sent Anna to this country, and she was on the point of arriving.  He added that, as manifestly it was not possible to support two families on his wages, he would like to provide for his second wife through “the Charity.”

A district secretary who has worked for many years with Italians is authority for the statement that marriages in Italy are always registered at the man’s legal residence, no matter where the marriage took place.  “Careful Italian parents, if they cannot get reliable information in other ways, write to the ‘paese’ of a suitor for information in regard to his conjugal condition.  A marriage which takes place in America is customarily registered with the consul for transmission to the home town in Italy.”

In some countries of Latin America great confusion may be caused by the fact that a marriage performed in church is not legal in the eyes of the state unless a second ceremony is gone through before the civil authorities.  A Guatemalan woman, deserted in this country, had no recourse in law because she had had only the church ceremony in her country.  Her claim to the status of common law wife was invalidated by the man’s producing proof that he was already married at the time the religious ceremony was performed.

Having established the fact that a legal marriage has taken place, the case worker must keep in mind the possibility that it may have been later dissolved.  It is not at all uncommon to find that a deserter who has gone off with another woman has started proceedings to get a divorce by “publication.”  This can happen when the two have gone to a state where such unfair divorce procedure is permitted.  Publication in these cases takes place in local newspapers which there is little or no chance of the wife seeing; and she may later find herself a divorced woman with no legal claim for support for herself or children, and suffering under charges of misconduct without having had a chance of being heard.  The National Desertion Bureau found this proceeding so common an abuse that it established a clearing bureau in its central office, and its local representatives in different parts of the country notify this bureau as soon as any action for divorce is started by a man with a Jewish name against a wife whose “address is unknown."[23]