When the original inhabitants of the Ranch moved to Texas, the legal age for marriage, with the permission of a parent, was 14--the age that the state of Texas claimed girls were marrying at the Ranch when it raided the community. Those accusations have since been somewhat undermined by the inability of the state to correctly identify the ages of many of the children there.

The FLDS has announced no change in their pluralistic marriage tradition--and they are unlikely to, as it is a key part of their theology that such unions are a source of eternal glorification. However, as long as the marriages are "spiritual" and not engaged in by those who are underage, it is unclear whether the state of Texas would have any further right to object to the general existence of the FLDS community.

The FLDS are a breakaway sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, colloquially also knows as "Mormons," after the Angel Moroni, who, according to the doctrine of both, showed LDS founder Joseph Smith the location of the golden plates that became the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon claim to chronicle the early history of ancient tribes on the American continent.)

The LDS church officially renounced polygamous marriage in 1890, and a ban on such marriages was officially written into the Utah state constitution as a condition of acceptance for statehood. The FLDS is one of the larger of several breakaway sects of Mormonism which has never renounced polygamous marriage and is known to have settlements in Utah, Colorado, Texas, South Dakota, Mexico, and Canada.