‘Seeking Sister Wife’ Family Moves From Utah to Oregon to Avoid Jail Time

On a recent episode of Seeking Sister Wife, the Briney family revealed that they were taking a huge risk by appearing on the new TLC show while living in Utah, where cohabitation is against the law. "Okay you guys," Drew Briney told his children, "So, our situation with the neighbors. They don't know that we have more than one mama here." Wife Auralee Thompson added, "We could end up without a home and some of us could go to jail."

With the very real threat of arrest looming, the Brineys left Utah behind and relocated to Oregon. Back in December, Drew shared a photo of the family's new digs on Facebook and wrote, "Here’s my new home in Oregon — only renting for now…" In a separate post, he added, "80% of our stuff is in Oregon. We should move the rest this coming Saturday. I’ve made over thirty butterfly displays as gifts to whomever of our friends comes to visit before we go. Farewell for a season Utah!"

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The relocation wasn't an easy one, though. According to Starcasm, the Briney family originally planned to move to Idaho and even had a house lined up, but the purchase fell through. "Yeah — last minute, the man in charge said no sale or business with wicked people like us, so at the eleventh hour we were without a home to move into and no job to boot," Drew said. "It was sort of stressful."

But the family's new home wasn't their only problem; they had difficulty selling their place as well. "We’ve had our house under contract 3x in 2 months — 3rd one just fell through," Drew wrote in late December. "At the end of the day, we either sell it or go on food stamps so looks like a backup offer where I lose $30k equity may be our only real option," he added in the comments' section.

Some of the Briney children react to being told their neighbors don't know they have multiple mothers.

But while many fans don't seem to have a problem with their lifestyle, many criticize them for openly encouraging their children to lie to protect themselves. On The Briney Family blog, Drew defends his decision.

"In the show, TLC was gracious enough to include my instruction to my children that there is only one exception to lying: to protect an innocent person from harm. Maybe you disagree. Maybe you believe that it is only okay if the person might get killed… I can respect that perspective. It isn’t explicit in the Biblical text."

Seeking Sister Wife airs Sundays at 10 p.m. EST on TLC.