KevinSim wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 3:11 am
The same exact legal status they'd have in a monogamous legal system. I really don't see how there'd be any legal problems at all. Clearly both members of a married couple would have to consent before either one of them took a second spouse, but other than that the three-way marriage between Albert, Beth, and Charles could he treated legally as two separate two-way marriages, one between Albert and Beth, and one between Beth and Charles. What problems would arise from such a three-way marriage?
I think that there could be a metric tonne of a legal problems.
For example, Albert owns the Yellowstone Ranch. He courts and marries Beth--but later falls in love with their smoking-hot baby sitter, Charlene--after he sees a bit of her milky breast, as she bends over to adjust her Birkenstock. He knows he wants to marry her. He asks permission of Beth; she remembers her church teachings, and the prophet Joseph; and eventually grants it. Given he has Betty's consent, Albert proposes to Charlene and marries her. Now Albert has two spouses, Beth and Charlene. Because of community property laws, both Beth and Charlene are now part owners of the Yellowstone Ranch. Beth is not quite happy that this has reduced her share of the ranch, but she grumbles and lives with it.
Though her husband is married to two people, Beth only has one spouse, Albert. After a bit of jealousy, she channels her inner Emma and asks Albert if she also gets to marry someone else. Backed into a corner, Albert concedes that that is indeed her right.
In her skin-tight jeans, Beth is walking the ranch one day and sees a sweaty, shirtless Delbert shoving manure out of the barn. She swoons, licks the sweat off Delbert's pectorals, and decides to marry him. Beth is now married to both Albert and Delbert. Community property laws allow Delbert to own a portion of Beth's piece of the Albert-Beth-and-Charlene-owned Yellowstone Ranch.
However, it turns out that Delbert is already married to a simmering and swarthy Native American named Elmer--who was another perspiring, bare-chested cowboy in need of some pectoral sweat-licking. So, after marrying Beth, Delbert now has two spouses.
With his new share of the ranch, the not-quite-white-and-delightsome Elmer is happy to quit playing giddy-up and live off the part of the Yellowstone Ranch that was stolen from his people--but that now rightly belongs to him. One day, while roping calves, trying to learn to walk in pointy-toed cowboy boots, and inexplicably branding his own chest with a Y, Elmer glimpses a bit of side-boob of the previously-mentioned smoking hot baby sitter, Charlene--as she again bends over to adjust her Birkenstock. Having never been with a woman before, Elmer is smitten. He talks Charlene into marrying him. Now, both Elmer and Charlene each have two spouses. And, more--or different--shares of the Yellowstone Ranch.
Years pass. All the couples (or um, triples) on the Yellowstone Ranch have conjugal relations with their lawfully married partners (though, admittedly, they sometimes forget who is paired with whom). All have children, whether biological or adopted. The kids consider themselves to all be siblings, with many and various parents, who are both mean and nice to them. Everyone own parts of everything, but no one can agree on anything. Life is hell for everybody.
Years pass some more. Beth finally decides she's had her fill of sweat-licking and boob-glimpsing and asks for a divorce from Albert. Her attorneys and the courts face a conundrum. How do they divide up the ranch, award custody of the kids, and decide who gets the vinyl recording of Tom Jones singing "Why, Why, Why, Delilah"? In the matter of custody, they determine that biological parentage isn't much of a help because, as is the always the case, the state wants what is best for the child, regardless of whose spermatozoon won which race and which breast soothed the what infant.