With 17 of their 25 children still living at home, breakfast is a military operation for the Dargers.

As organized chaos unfolds at the family home in the Utah countryside outside Salt Lake City, the parents come to help out.

Alina is the first, followed by her "sister wives" Vicki and Valerie, and finally their husband Joe.

The Dargers are members of a polygamous marriage, a lifestyle they say is endorsed by their fundamentalist Mormon beliefs.

Joe married cousins Alina and Vicki in 1990. Ten years later, Vicki's twin sister Valerie joined them, after her first plural marriage broke down. She brought five children with her from that relationship.

The family has lived openly for several years now, even publishing a 2011 book entitled "Love Times Three".

But for a long time, Joe Darger says he worried that he might be arrested under the anti-polygamy laws in effect in the western US state.

"The fear when I went public four years ago, that fear was very real," he told AFP.

"This is a third degree felony... this is serious prison time. My grandfathers were imprisoned, so that was a real impact that we felt."

That fear has lifted for now, following a December ruling by a federal judge that struck down a key part of the state's anti-polygamy law as unconstitutional.

Judge Clark Waddoups ruled that legislation banning "unlawful cohabitation" was at odds with the constitutional right to freedom of religion.

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