So here I am, on a wednesday night, desperately trying to finish my Linguistics presentation for tomorrow, finding myself unable to concentrate. Thus, time for a livejournal update
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I'm a little uncomfortable with the word 'corporation', but thats probably just an association with the current business corporations (faceless evil that they tend to be).
Hmmm. My initial thought is "no, its too complicated for that", but maybe its not, and the charter would just have to encompass the complication. The initial thought I had was that in several poly relationships I know, the arrangements between various people are different for each combination - they've worked out what they want and need and realised its not the same for each set of people. But I guess you could write that sort of thing into it as well. (was that even coherent?)
I think the first few examples would be pretty exciting, especially when you add kids into the mix too. Hmmmmm. [wanders off thinking]
On the other hand some polyamorous relationships are already set up as a 'legal corporation'. I think it would work best when talking about polyfidelity, multiple partners but not necessarily interested in people outside the group.
Hmmm. You might be right, given you're talking about people making the effort to codify their relationship... or at least, in an open relationship, that the charter would only apply to the primary folks... although that makes life exciting too. What counts as de-facto in that sort of situation? :)
Hmm... Interesting question. You could claim that de facto requirements would be stated in the corporate documents, but that's probably unsatisfactory as things go, especially since de-factohood has some important benefits.
Another approach might be that a de-facto is a person who is living as if they were within the marriage corporation, but who have not actually signed a contract of inclusion with them. Effectively, a person who looks like they're in the marriage, but is legally not, which I believe is close to the legal definition of a de-facto anyway.
The problem there is person A is married to B and C, and starts a relationship with Z such that it might be regarded as defacto. But B & C aren't involved, and there's been no formal recognition of Z's relationship in the context of A, B & C....
Not that i think your idea is bad, I'm just thinking of the possibly complicated bits.
I was just going to suggest, If B is married to A and C, then shouldn't A and C be married to be part of this 'corporation' too? Now I'm all confused...
I think that would depend on how the relationship was set up, and how much A and C were committed to each other. If A and C have no romantic/intimate/sexual relationship with other (each only to B), then they might not want to commit to each other at a 'marriage contract' level.
A contract could also be written with any future Zs in mind, if the particular marriage allowed for that.
Among the issues I was trying to solve with making marriage a separate legal entity to the people within the marriage was this kind of situation. You can stop thinking about who's married to who, because they're all technically married to the marriage, not to each other. As such, the internals of the various relationships matter only insofar as they appear on the marriage charter. The relationships could be:
Hmm... That seems to indicate that I'm on the right track thinking-wise. Do you know the specifics of the relationships?
I don't think I'm suggesting marriages be a specific type of corporation, more that the corporation concept might be a better legal concept to hold on to if polyamorous marriage is to be included in the law.
It may also be that a better way of thinking of it would be to have the Marriage as a specific legal fiction, who's sole purpose is to facilitate the easy application of marriage contracts. Each person who enters the marriage corporation decides on their own marriage contract, and this is discussed with those already within the marriage. These contracts have the information that I previously claimed the Charter would provide.
Of course, a major issue is that using a corporation doesn't really solve the messy issue of shared property rights, unless all within the marriage corporation are willing to accept that the marriage owns all shared property instead of the individuals within it. More thinking may be
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You might want to use the word 'trust' rather than 'corporation' - with corporation, there's an implicit (and maybe explicit) statutory expectation that its raison d'être is profit. With a trust, the goals can be much more vague and woolly :-)
For instance, it's quite normal for a trust to pay for a child's education.
For the same reason, you probably wouldn't want it to lapse when there's just one person (if it's a trust rather than a new legal fiction) - in fact, you'd want it to go on even when all the parents die, for the benefit of the children.
Perhaps, but then I've heard of not-for-profit corporations, and was of the belief that these are actually reasonably common (I believe most charities work on this sort of structure or similar).
The other thing is, monogamous marriages do lapse when only one member remains, as a rule. Law simply notes that the surviving parent traditionally gets the child. A clause "in case of dissolution" should probably provide guidelines for something like this. If you keep the system similar to marriage, there should be an obvious way for a marriage to dissolve upon. If the relationship wants to set up a trust for the children of that marriage, I think that setting up an independent trust is probably better anyway.
Hmmm. My initial thought is "no, its too complicated for that", but maybe its not, and the charter would just have to encompass the complication. The initial thought I had was that in several poly relationships I know, the arrangements between various people are different for each combination - they've worked out what they want and need and realised its not the same for each set of people. But I guess you could write that sort of thing into it as well. (was that even coherent?)
I think the first few examples would be pretty exciting, especially when you add kids into the mix too. Hmmmmm. [wanders off thinking]
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Another approach might be that a de-facto is a person who is living as if they were within the marriage corporation, but who have not actually signed a contract of inclusion with them. Effectively, a person who looks like they're in the marriage, but is legally not, which I believe is close to the legal definition of a de-facto anyway.
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The problem there is person A is married to B and C, and starts a relationship with Z such that it might be regarded as defacto. But B & C aren't involved, and there's been no formal recognition of Z's relationship in the context of A, B & C....
Not that i think your idea is bad, I'm just thinking of the possibly complicated bits.
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A contract could also be written with any future Zs in mind, if the particular marriage allowed for that.
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A <-> B
B <-> C
C <-> D
D <-> A ( ... )
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I don't think I'm suggesting marriages be a specific type of corporation, more that the corporation concept might be a better legal concept to hold on to if polyamorous marriage is to be included in the law.
It may also be that a better way of thinking of it would be to have the Marriage as a specific legal fiction, who's sole purpose is to facilitate the easy application of marriage contracts. Each person who enters the marriage corporation decides on their own marriage contract, and this is discussed with those already within the marriage. These contracts have the information that I previously claimed the Charter would provide.
Of course, a major issue is that using a corporation doesn't really solve the messy issue of shared property rights, unless all within the marriage corporation are willing to accept that the marriage owns all shared property instead of the individuals within it. More thinking may be ( ... )
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For instance, it's quite normal for a trust to pay for a child's education.
For the same reason, you probably wouldn't want it to lapse when there's just one person (if it's a trust rather than a new legal fiction) - in fact, you'd want it to go on even when all the parents die, for the benefit of the children.
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The other thing is, monogamous marriages do lapse when only one member remains, as a rule. Law simply notes that the surviving parent traditionally gets the child. A clause "in case of dissolution" should probably provide guidelines for something like this. If you keep the system similar to marriage, there should be an obvious way for a marriage to dissolve upon. If the relationship wants to set up a trust for the children of that marriage, I think that setting up an independent trust is probably better anyway.
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