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Legal nuts and bolts...ie, inheritance etc.

Robeld

Robeld

Seasoned Member
Real Person
Female
Well being fairly new here, and seeing how my ultra practical mother raised her three daughters to be the same, I have a few legal questions. My basic understanding is that polygyny is not legal in the US and that most polygynous families consist of one legally married couple and then additional wives who have no legal contract. How do you make provision for inheritance and the passing down of assets etc in the event of death? What about providing health insurance? And I don't even want to think about different tax scenarios lol!
 
Robhar said:
Well being fairly new here, and seeing how my ultra practical mother raised her three daughters to be the same, I have a few legal questions. My basic understanding is that polygyny is not legal in the US and that most polygynous families consist of one legally married couple and then additional wives who have no legal contract. How do you make provision for inheritance and the passing down of assets etc in the event of death? What about providing health insurance? And I don't even want to think about different tax scenarios lol!
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Good questions. These have been discussed, usually in the context of trusts set up to protect the interests of each wife and associated children. Maybe someone can recall title or other info to search for and dredge up the wisdom in those threads.
 
I agree this has been discussed before but I don't think a practical application was really ventured into in those discussions. I was wondering if maybe we could build a hypothetical plural family and try and go though the motions of establishing a financial picture for that family. Wonder if that's possible?
 
Cap said:
I agree this has been discussed before but I don't think a practical application was really ventured into in those discussions. I was wondering if maybe we could build a hypothetical plural family and try and go though the motions of establishing a financial picture for that family. Wonder if that's possible?
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Cap, I like that idea!

Just finishing up settling my mom's estate and we have discovered she could have done a few things a little differently to make it easier on us legally. But she was a "do it yourselfer" and thought it was all fine...plus I think she thought she was going to live at least a hundred more years lol. She was 79...what a character!
 
Robhar said:
How do you make provision for inheritance and the passing down of assets etc in the event of death? What about providing health insurance?
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It can be as simple as a written will. You can leave your house to your neighbors dog if you want to.
Buy life insurance policies with specific beneficiaries.

Putting everything in trust is doable but more complicated.
 
Here’s a plug for an Irrevocable Private Trust. The first Trustee could easily create sub trusts for each one of the wives offspring ( as in a sub trust for each branch) with her as the Second Trustee and another wife as Third (just in case of an accident involving both 1st and 2nd)

IMO the beneficiaries of the Trust should never be the Husband or wives. It should always be the minor children with the trustees being the adults.

Own nothing! Control everything.
 
Verifyveritas76 said:
Here’s a plug for an Irrevocable Private Trust. The first Trustee could easily create sub trusts for each one of the wives offspring ( as in a sub trust for each branch) with her as the Second Trustee and another wife as Third (just in case of an accident involving both 1st and 2nd)

IMO the beneficiaries of the Trust should never be the Husband or wives. It should always be the minor children with the trustees being the adults.

Own nothing! Control everything.
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I was just talking to my mom about this. Thanks
 
A little birdie told me we may be talking about legal issues at the men's break-out session at the retreat next week. That will be very helpful.
 
It is de facto and/or de jure legal to have relationships with multiple women in all US states. What's not legal is having multiple licensed marriages.

To expand on what @steve and @Verifyveritas76 were saying, you can do inheritance anyway you like. The only thing a lack of legal marriage means is a mans property won't pass to his wife by default. But since you'd have multiple wives, that won't work anyway. A will will get it done however you like. But Trusts are better because they avoid probate, which can be messy and expensive.

Tax...only 1 person will be able to claim them as dependents. And the man will only be able to file jointly as married with his legal wife. Others would have to file singly. But ask a tax pro to be sure. Is the marriage penalty still a thing? Not being able to claim legal marriage status may only help.

Health insurance is more complicated. Anyone can purchase but with the federalization it is crazy expensive. Insurance through the workplace is likely only going to be good for the employee and their legal spouse, not any sisterwives or the husband if a non-legal wife is the employee. Kids...will depend on the employer; but they're getting more and more picky about proving the dependents are yours so you may find you can only insure children who are biologically yours. Medical sharing ministries may be more lax in this regard, and are cheaper, but they often have morality clauses which are likely to cause problems for polygamists (or at least they did in the past).

Robhar said:
then additional wives who have no legal contract
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No legal marriage license. But it is common for people to have cohabitation agreements; which are a legal contract. They're not too dissimilar to a rental agreement. I've also toyed with the idea of organizing as an intentional community. It is not uncommon presently and historically for those to practice some form of plural marriage and they fall under the same sort of tax and org law as monasteries. These will also often hold real property in trusts.

Trusts are a very powerful tool. And they're not just a place to park assets. They can get bank accounts, act as a tax vehicle, etc.

disclaimer: I'm not licensed by the government to tell you any of this, if you get serious about this find someone to give you a 'legal' opinion.
 
I would think that a trust should be able to take care of the health insurance side of things as well. Specifically for beneficiaries and trustees
 
Verifyveritas76 said:
I would think that a trust should be able to take care of the health insurance side of things as well. Specifically for beneficiaries and trustees
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Even for workplace provided health insurance? How?
 
Not sure about that approach. As a small business owner I’ve been self insured for so long I wasn’t thinking about that.
 
We’ve had a health share program for years now and never used it. We typically self pay for everything we need to date but it’s in place for the big stuff.
 
So what about surname changes? Those of you with 2 or more wives, did they all take your name?
 
We are trying to keep it on the down-low, but we did with the first one who is now estranged.
We haven’t with Karin because it’s too much of a pattern
There is a business/ministry that must be considered.
 
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