Is adultery illegal? Affairs, divorce and the law in the US

This is general information, not legal advice. Family law is state law, it changes, and how a judge applies it depends on facts we don't know. If you are married and either having an affair or dealing with one, a one-hour consultation with a family-law attorney in your state is cheap compared with what is at stake. Everything below links to the statute or reporting it comes from, so you can check it and take it to that lawyer.

With that said, is adultery illegal? In most of the US, no: an affair is not a crime, and where it still is on paper, prosecutions are vanishingly rare. The real legal exposure is civil and financial: alimony in states that still weigh fault, lawsuits against the other man or woman in a few states, and, increasingly, what you or your spouse do with phones and recordings while it unravels.

Is adultery a crime? Which states still have laws

In a handful of states, on paper. Michigan, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Virginia still have statutes we confirmed; New York repealed its law in 2024.

A shrinking number of states still have criminal adultery statutes. New York repealed its 1907 law in November 2024; it had made adultery a class B misdemeanor punishable by up to three months in jail, and the bill's sponsor counted only 13 people charged and five convicted under it, according to NPR's report on the repeal. Statutes we confirmed are still on the books, as of our last check:

• Michigan: MCL 750.30 makes adultery a felony. A repeal bill passed the state Senate 30 to 6 in December 2024 but, according to MichiganVotes, saw no House action after that; it describes the offense as punishable by up to four years in prison.
• Wisconsin: Wis. Stat. § 944.16 makes it a Class I felony for a married person to have sex with someone other than their spouse, and for anyone to have sex with a person married to someone else.
• Oklahoma: 21 O.S. § 872 makes adultery a felony punishable by up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $500, or both. Under § 871 a prosecution generally has to be started by the spouse of one of the people involved.
• Virginia: Va. Code § 18.2-365 makes it a Class 4 misdemeanor, the lowest class, for a married person to have sex with someone other than their spouse.

Other states have similar laws; we have listed only the ones we checked against the current statute text. In practice, the reason these laws matter today is less the risk of arrest than their side effects: an adultery statute can give a spouse leverage, and in fault states (below) the same conduct can count against you in a divorce.

Is adultery illegal in the military?

It can be. The Uniform Code of Military Justice can punish "extramarital sexual conduct" when it harms good order or discredits the armed forces.

If you are a service member, the Uniform Code of Military Justice still treats affairs as a potential crime. Since the 2019 Manual for Courts-Martial, the offense under Article 134 is called "extramarital sexual conduct"; the Army's summary of the 2019 changes notes it now covers same-sex affairs and that a legal separation ordered by a court is an affirmative defense. Article 134 itself, 10 U.S.C. § 934, reaches conduct that prejudices good order and discipline or brings discredit on the armed forces, so whether an affair became a problem for the unit or became public matters.

Does cheating matter in a divorce?

It won't stop a divorce anywhere, but in states that still weigh fault it can change alimony and how property is split.

No-fault divorce is everywhere now

Every state now offers some form of no-fault divorce, where neither spouse has to prove the other did anything wrong, according to Cornell's Legal Information Institute. New York was the last state to adopt it, in 2010, as DNAinfo reported when the law took effect. So an affair won't stop a divorce, and in many states it won't change the outcome either. North Carolina, for example, grants a divorce to either spouse after a year of living separate and apart, under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 50-6, whatever either of them did.

Can cheating affect alimony?

Many states keep fault grounds alongside no-fault ones, and the LII notes that a fault divorce can bring the filing spouse a bigger share of property or more alimony. Two examples of how directly an affair can count:

• North Carolina: under § 50-16.3A, if the dependent spouse (the one who would receive alimony) had "illicit sexual behavior" during the marriage and before separation, the court shall not award alimony. If the supporting spouse (the one who would pay) did, the court shall order alimony. If both did, it's up to the judge, and conduct the other spouse condoned isn't counted. Marital misconduct is also listed as a factor in setting the amount.
• Virginia: adultery is a ground for divorce under Va. Code § 20-91(A)(1), and under § 20-107.1 a spouse against whom that ground exists can't get permanent spousal support unless the court finds, by clear and convincing evidence, that denying it would be a manifest injustice. Courts must also consider adultery among the factors that ended the marriage when deciding support.

Notice a detail in both: timing. North Carolina counts behavior before the date of separation, and Virginia's ground refers to adultery before the parties last separated. When you separated, and whether you can prove it, can matter as much as what happened. That is one of the first things a lawyer will ask.

Can you sue someone for having an affair with your spouse?

In a few states, yes. Two old torts survive there: alienation of affection (a third party wrongfully destroyed the love and affection in a marriage) and criminal conversation (sex with someone's spouse during the marriage; despite the name, it is a civil claim). Wikipedia's summary of the tort lists Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota and Utah as recognizing alienation of affection as of 2016, and notes that Utah's Supreme Court disallowed criminal conversation claims in 1991. North Carolina is where most of the reported cases, and the headline verdicts, come from.

North Carolina's rules

Since 2009, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 52-13 sets three limits: nothing that happens after the spouses physically separate with the intent that it be permanent can give rise to a claim; a suit must be filed within three years of the defendant's last act; and only a natural person can be sued (not, say, the employer where the affair happened).

The verdicts

• In 2010 a North Carolina jury ordered Anne Lundquist to pay $9 million to Cynthia Shackelford, the wife of the man she was seeing, according to the ABA Journal. Lundquist did not attend the trial or hire a lawyer.
• In 2018 a judge ordered Francisco Huizar III to pay $8.8 million to Keith King, whose wife Huizar had been seeing for 16 months, most of it punitive damages, as WLOS reported.
• In 2025 a Durham County jury found a TikTok influencer liable for criminal conversation and alienation of affection over an affair with her manager and awarded his ex-wife $1.75 million, according to ABC7.

If you live in North Carolina, or your affair partner's spouse does, take this seriously: messages, hotel receipts and app accounts are exactly the evidence these suits run on. Our privacy guide for affair sites covers how to keep them from existing in the first place.

Is it illegal to spy on a cheating spouse?

Often, yes. Intercepting a spouse's calls or messages, including with a secret monitoring app, can be a federal crime under the Wiretap Act, whoever is cheating.

When a marriage is coming apart, the temptation to read the other person's phone is strong. Some of the ways people do it are crimes, whoever is cheating.

Intercepting communications

The federal Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2511, makes it a crime to intentionally intercept someone's phone calls or electronic communications, punishable by up to five years in prison. The main exception is when you are a party to the conversation or one party has consented, which is why recording your own call is generally legal federally while bugging your spouse's calls with other people is not. State wiretap laws can be stricter than the federal one, so check your state's rule before you record even your own conversations.

Stalkerware

Apps sold to secretly monitor a partner's phone (messages, location, photos) are the modern version. The FTC calls them stalkerware. In 2021 it banned SpyFone and its CEO from the surveillance business, alleging the apps secretly collected photos, texts, browsing history and GPS location and exposed data on about 2,200 people in a breach. Its consumer guide to stalkerware lists the warning signs (fast battery drain, unexpected data use, a partner who knows things they shouldn't) and warns that removing it can escalate an abusive situation, so it recommends contacting the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) first if you might be in danger.

Practically: if your spouse might be checking your phone, assume they are, use a passcode they don't know, and keep your accounts locked down. If you are thinking of checking theirs, talk to a lawyer before you install anything. Illegally intercepted communications can turn you into the defendant.

What this means if you're on an affair site

• Criminal risk is close to zero for civilians, but a handful of states still have the statutes, and the military is different.
• Money is the real risk. In fault states an affair can cost alimony or change who pays it. Separation dates matter.
• Your affair partner may carry the risk in North Carolina and the other alienation-of-affection states, even though you are the married one.
• Everything is evidence. Site accounts, billing, messages and photos are discoverable in litigation and have leaked before: the 2015 Ashley Madison breach is covered in our Ashley Madison review, and our Victoria Milan review covers a site that bills under a neutral name.
• Don't spy, and assume you are being spied on.

And if what you actually want is a marriage where this isn't a secret, our guide to open marriage versus affairs covers how couples set that up. Consent doesn't make every legal question go away (North Carolina's alimony statute ignores conduct the other spouse condoned, but you would have to prove it), but it removes most of them.

Questions to answer before you see a lawyer

A family-law consultation goes faster, and costs less, if you arrive with answers. These are the facts that decide most of what is above:

1. Which state's law applies? Usually the state where you live and would file. For a lawsuit against an affair partner, where the affair happened can matter too.
2. Have you separated, and when? North Carolina and Virginia both draw lines at the date of separation. A separate bedroom under the same roof may not count the way a move-out does, so describe exactly what changed and when.
3. Who earns what? Alimony rules only bite if one of you is financially dependent on the other. Bring recent pay stubs or tax returns.
4. Did your spouse know, or agree? Conduct a spouse condoned is treated differently under North Carolina's alimony statute. If your marriage was open, say so, and bring anything that shows it.
5. What records exist? Messages, photos, app accounts, card statements, shared cloud backups. Don't delete anything once a divorce or lawsuit is likely without asking the lawyer first: destroying evidence after a case is on the horizon can do more damage than the evidence itself.

None of this requires you to decide anything yet. The point of a first meeting is to learn where you stand in your state, so the decisions you make next (stay, leave, open the marriage, end the affair) are made with the real stakes in view rather than the ones you imagined at 2 a.m.

Finding a lawyer

Look for a family-law attorney licensed in the state where you live (and, for an alienation-of-affection claim, where the affair happened). Your state bar runs a lawyer referral service, and the American Bar Association keeps a directory of lawyer referral services by state. Bring dates: when the affair began and ended, when you separated, and what records exist.