PPAU Policy: Marriage (revisited)

The crowds in the street, the celebrations, the survey result, all point that government recognition is important to many, otherwise why would they care?

Perhaps the better question is what personal choices should the State regulate or impose restrictions to only legally married people or only people who are in a relationship for that matter. Single people are important too. But this question is totally separate from Marriage.

I say recognition because it’s the foundation of anything else.

For example a less-enlightened government might recognise a same-sex relationship and then persecute its participants.

As I see it there are a few main reasons for the State to be getting involved in recognising relationships:

  1. Legal stuff, like next-of-kin and other traditional spousal privileges like not having to testify
  2. Financial stuff, if households operating as a single financial entity get different treatment, and also rules about division of property when the relationship participants separate.

Neither item above really relies on the people being in the relationship being married, it’s just really convenient if their relationship was declared previously.

(There’s also an interest in families with children being stable, but ‘being married’ isn’t really any barrier to instability and in the worst case comes with other attitudes that lock people into abusive relationships.)

Note that almost none of the above precludes relationships with three or more people.

Well perhaps what you are looking for then is for the government not to require registration for marriages - all legal matters should be manageable without the government having to know your exact relationship status.

The alternative to “recognise” in that scenario was “ignore”.

all legal matters should be manageable without the government having to know your exact relationship status.

If there are to be laws regarding spousal legal privileges, property division in the event of a breakup, or similar, then someone in the government or judiciary will in fact need to know your exact relationship status in order to enforce those laws.

Probably the most consistent course of action IMHO is to ensure that de facto relationships are treated identically to marriages in the eyes of the law, i.e. remove whatever issues cause things like:

Only a judge determining facts of a case should get that privilege, not the government.

Why is Marriage the default option? If anything, de-facto should be the default.

There are so many non-traditional types of relationships which are not legally recognised marriages let alone de-facto, that many couples are opting out of marriage, and what’s the public benefit of having marriage except to enforce morality of what a marriage usually means?

If a couple wants to be legally married, that’s okay too, the Marriage option is still there.

If a couple wants to be married under their own traditions but not with legal recognition, that should also be fine as long as it doesn’t break any other laws.

Peripheral matters should only be looked at according to the facts like dependance, income, amount contributed to the relationship, shared items, next of kin nomination, inheritance, etc.

For Children in the Family Court, things are already handled in the best interest of the child, don’t even matter if the parents were in a marriage, de-facto, one-night stand, etc.

Yeah I know it’s a lot of work to tip a current system on it’s head, and it doesn’t have to be done all at once, but it’s a libertarian thing of not having government involved in the running of our relationships itself, it should be up to the participants to decide how to run their relationship and make the necessary legal arrangements than have the government decide for them.

I think as long as neither marriage act nor civil unions are prevented from any citizens it seems fine from libertarian perspective to keep both as freedom of choice so long as other rights like NOK arent excluded. But that doesnt require replacing marriage act.

NOK?

asdasdasda

next of kinnnnnnnnn

All right. In a nutshell, all I’m saying is that all these rights are enshrined in Marriage when non-marriage is just as much a valid lifestyle choice as being married, so couples shouldn’t be pushed into Marriage to receive legal benefits if they don’t want to go that far on a personal level.

I agree. So it could be PP position that any of those rights still lacking in defacto status can be strengthened to be in line with marriage. Especially wrt NOK. Given that marriage is 1-1 it might be argued tax status would be different to polygamous as government has incentive to incentivise 1-1 marriage. Its a cultural thing. So there will be still some differences but main thibgs like NOK could be strengthened perhaps with private contracts. Im not exactly sure how defacto works. Nor polygamy (multiple defacto relos) for that matter.

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wrt. tax and welfare. you gotta avoid double dippers: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2016/December/Polygamy_and_welfare
which are a burden to the state.

so i think a more Liberal stance that just says we support recognising NOK and Power of Attorney ((any other lacking rights)) for defacto couples who’ve agreed to a defacto status through a private contract. but thats just my opinion. im certainly not an expert about defacto status but when i looked into it there certainly were less guarantee on NOK and PoA. but i doubt any other party would want to change too much else…
I think LDP says it like “whilst government is involved in marriage, then all should get equal treatment” etc.
It does seem silly to try to replace marriage now after we have just achieved marriage equality.

I think that Polyamory, Polygamy, being Single (by choice), asexual relationships warrants further investigation.

Marriage/1:1 relationships are much more simple to legislate for, and at the time of these laws it was the cultural norm, but these days non-1:1 are a lot more common.

Removing legislative jurisdiction over religious marriage would be a simple thing which would be a huge step forward. The Marriage Act has been used in the past to prosecute over Marriage to child Brides which was done under religious law and they did not even apply to the government for a legally valid marriage. I think that this enforcement should have been done under existing Child Protection laws, it set a bad precedent that the State gives themselves jurisdiction over religious practices rather than for the purpose of actually protecting children.

Personally (and I consider myself a religious person) I would prefer to be religiously married (because that has actual meaning to me) but not legally married (because I don’t want it to be any of the State’s business) even though I am 100% eligible (and actually am) legally married in the State’s eyes.

At least gender requirement has been removed from current 1:1 structures, that is a huge step forward.

Marriage needs to stay, but other options should be available as well

If you remove all of the government restrictions on what arrangements may constitute a marriage in the eyes of the law, making it non-denominational, gender neutral, numerically neutral etc, then you end up with the existing policy that makes it a Civil Union in law, but whatever you want to call it in your own community.

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Evidence for the “marriage > de facto for next-of-kin stuff”:

The difficulties continued when they applied two weeks later for a birth certificate at NSW Births Deaths and Marriages. It took four months to receive the certificate and for her to be given her legal rights as a mother.

“We needed to prove that we lived together, we needed to show that we had things at the same address and we we’re actually a couple,” she said.

“It takes away your experience of being a new parent, it really does.”

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