Legal Question in Family Law in Texas

And it just never occurred to her to mention that to you? I'm curious how it is you finally found out. If she is in fact still married to this other guy, then no, your marriage is not valid. Your marriage would, however, become valid if she did go ahead and divorce him at some point (or if he died).

You don't really say what your feelings about all this are, or how long you've known about it. If your goal is to end up with a valid marriage, then the first step is going to be to find out if she actually is still married. She may not be. I would assume they haven't been in contact in the last 24 years, and especially if she's moved a couple of times, she would not necessarily know if he'd either died or divorced her (if you can't find your spouse, you can have them "served" by running notice in the newspaper). It may turn out their marriage is long gone, in which case you're fine.

If not, she'll need to divorce him if the two of you still want to be married. She can do tbat via citation by publication as well (unless she can actually find him). Hopefully, no one would be interested in pursuing bigamy charges on this. It's not exactly something law enforcement goes seeking out, but it's there and it's a felony. That really only applies to her, though--the only way you'd have criminal liability is if you knew about the other marriage and married her anyway. Good luck with this, and while it may not be much consolation, please know that you're not the only person around facing this situation--it happens more often than you'd think.