Legal Poly Marriage is not fiscally practical

The blogPoly Percolations: polyamory in the news had an interesting jump point about how legal poly marriage is never going to happen. This is Mistress Matisse's personal experience of course but it does raise the question: Is legal poly marriage fiscally practical?

Why I don't want the government involved in my poly marriage:

First off, government would have to define what polyamory and poly marriage really mean. By defining a thing, you limit it. This is not really what polyamory is all about. It takes the individual choice out of it. You'd have to limit it in some way which necessarily excludes some expressions of the relationship style. Why the limit? Because of taxes.

You would also have to work out things like custody, how to protect in cases of domestic violence and child abuse and how divorce would work. That would require a social shift in attitudes about such things.

We aren't a large movement with a lot of funding. It's not important to me to be recognized as married in the sense of benefits. What is important is that it isn't criminal. That I won't be arrested for living in a way that harms no one.

I am married on paper already and that solves the problem of legal benefits and in no way indicates a stronger bond emotionally to Prof or Mad Science. It does however determine where I live and where my fiscal responsibilities lie. In many ways this makes legal marriage a financial decision rather than an emotional one. This is not far from how marriage has been in the past. Once and still in some places marriage was an arranged alliance between families to increase status, wealth, power or to create peace between families. It benefitted the social structure of family more than the married couple even in cultures that support wives with more than one husband.

The last time there was a really significant legal look at equality in marriage was at the beginning of the women's suffrage movement the following laws came into being. Divorce was expensive and difficult to obtain, especially for women. Women were also denied custody, sovereignty over her own property, and person. She would be denied higher education and the only career she could hope for outside marriage were the low paying or degrading jobs exclusive to women at the time. Seamstress, Laundress, Governess, Nanny, Cook, Nurse or Sex Worker.

• 1839: Infants and Child Custody Act: women were allowed take custody of their children under the age of seven if divorced or separated. They could not take custody if they had been found to be adulterous. Before this law the father was immediately awarded custody and it did not depend on the reasons for divorce.
• 1857: Matrimonial Causes Act: allows divorce—but only in limited instances: Imposes matrimonial double standard: Permits men to divorce on grounds of adultery, but not women.
• 1857: Civil divorce was introduced in England: The process left the divorced pair either unable to remarry, or it declared their existing children as illegitimate.
• 1870: Married Women's Property Act: allowed for women to keep their earnings and even inherit personal property and money. Everything else still belonged to her husband if she had acquired it before or after marriage.
• 1882: a woman could finally keep all personal and real property that she had gotten before and during her marriage.
• 1883: Custody Acts: allowed for women to be awarded custody of children up to the age of 16 (Moore par.4-5).

What does this have to do with poly marriage? Well, a lot really. These laws were made to protect women and children from the male dominated ownership policy marriage had been. An arrangement that allowed men to have a wife for property and procreation and a mistress (or mister) for companionship and sex for pleasure with no legal consequences. Many anti-suffragists considered feminism to be damaging to women because they were weak minded, emotionally unstable, and frail bodied. They believed this would bring the end of the institution of marriage whose sole purpose was property and procreation. Homosexual marriage doesn't meet these requirements even though it is often monogamous in nature how much more then, does poly stand outside tradition? That is not to say that poly isn't practical in our economy, more income and more support for children is a good thing, and in many ways is another way to have the benefits of extended family life of the past. The battle about abortion and rape culture we are experiencing proves that we aren't ready as a society to accept the leap to non-monogamy for a while yet. 

I, for one, am content with my situation. I, however, have no children to support and could support myself if things went south across the board. The more variables the more complicated this issue becomes, though, infinite possibility is hard to legislate. It would be like say, a small corporation with the members of the family as the board of directors which is an image most people have problems with when talking about the business of having relationships and children.