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Stats - Submitted for your consideration....

andrew

andrew

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Found a site that has some interesting resources. Formerly known as the Alternatives to Marriage Project, it is now known as Unmarried Equality.

From their Statistics page:

Public Opinion

In a 1995 Harris poll, 90% of people believed society “should value all types of families.” – Stephanie Coontz. 1997. The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms With America’s Changing Families.

43% of Americans in their twenties believe that cohabiting couples should receive the same benefits as married couples. – Gallup. 2001.

45% of Americans in their twenties believe that government should not be involved in licensing marriage. – Gallup. 2001.

55% of Americans approve of men and women living together without being married. – Gallup. 2007.

57% of Americans consider an unmarried couple who have lived together for five years just as committed in their relationship as a married couple who have lived together for the same time. -Gallup. 2008.

The majority of Americans aged 18-64 consider living in unmarried households as having either no effect or a positive effect on children. – Gallup. 2008.
 
Interesting. In New Zealand, once you've been living together for 3 years, you have exactly the same rights and obligations as a married couple. We also have civil unions (which are virtually identical to marriage but include same-sex relationships, and were purely introduced to soften-up people to gay marriage), and marriage (which now includes gay marriage so makes civil unions effectively obsolete). The same rights and obligations apply to all, including division of property on separation/divorce. So I do find it interesting to see a group pushing for the same laws in America.

This is rather problematic actually. It means that if you have a flatmate or boarder for over 3 years, they can claim you were in a relationship and demand half your assets when they leave. It's just your word against theirs. It may also introduce some legal problems for polygyny in the event of a divorce, because once you've been together for 3 years the law will attempt to impose equal division of assets which may not be appropriate if there are three or more people involved. This is a reason to have a strong private contract that also functions as a pre-nup and keeps certain assets out of common ownership (from the State's perspective) to then allow them to be governed by your own agreement.

You certainly need to be aware of the laws in your own jurisdiction.
 
Samuel, is bigamy criminalized in NZ?

Texas is a common law marriage (or 'informal marriage') state, with a specific provision in the bigamy statute for informal marriage, so it makes things a little dicey. I recommend a written 'Agreement of Intent Not to Have an Informal Marriage' as foundational to keeping the state out of our private lives and keeping people from alleging the existence of agreements that weren't there. From there you have to figure out how to provide for everyone using private agreements and not relying on assumptions that are made around the state of marriage, but I think that's healthier for everyone anyway, to actually think about what you're getting into....
 
Bigamy is criminalised but is defined as multiple marriages or civil unions, nothing against de-facto whatever you want. Common law marriage is not recognised. I just see potential legal issues around assets that would need to be addressed contractually.

Good recommendation around the Texas law. Laws are highly variable around the world. And we haven't even started talking about countries where polygamy is legal for Muslims but illegal for others... We live in a messy world, have to find a good local lawyer!
 
Yeah, working on that.... ;)
 
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