But the basic answer is easy: the more a benefit is perceived to be earned, paid for, or in the selfish interest of the rest of the taxpayers, the less it is resented. You earned your GI Bill by volunteering to get shot at for your country, you paid for your SSI disability by paying an earmarked tax during your working years, and your Pell Grant turns you into a high-tax-paying lawyer instead of a low-tax-paying fry cook.

Susan, I’m always hearing that handwavy “oh, well, we’re bright creatures, we can figure it out.” Well, then, let’s! How do we handle presumed paternity for a woman who has two legal husbands? If A marries B, has children with C, and B then marries D, does D have any community property interest in A’s assets if any or all parts of the marriage break up? For that matter, is D married to A at all? Do B and C have any kind of spousal privilege? Does A need anyone’s permission to go out and marry E through J? It gets really complicated, as polyamory is wont to do. Can the legal system handle that? Probably. I’d just like to figure out how, and even in discussions with people who understand the law and want such a thing to exist we end up no better off.

Legal authority: a spouse has the legal right to make decisions on behalf of a partner. Has the right to sign waivers on their behalf, and so on, esp. in medical emergencies. If a spouse is not available, another close family member may have this right. I’m wondering whether “sister wives” are legally considered sisters for these situations, and whether they are closer or farther, legally, than blood-kin sisters. (Spouses are closer legal kin than parents, for these situations.)

Whether or not there’s an absolute legal right to make medical decisions for one’s spouse, I assure you that hospitals don’t seek a court order before following a spouse’s instructions for care of an unconscious person. And if the person arrives with a spouse and a brother, the hospital will give priority to the spouse’s instructions.

the property of a deceased spouse is split between the surviving spouse and the children. Here, spouses I guess. What’s wrong with that?

Nothing wrong; it’s that an argument could be made for two different cases: if all the women are married to a man and not each other, he may be the only heir. If they’re all co-married, they could all be co-heirs… in which case, are her bio-children more favored, legally, than the other wives’ bio-children? Or do they all inherit equally?

No modern American polygamy known to me personally uses the concept “bio-children.” Children of the marriage are everyone’s children.

The courts, however, are very clear that there’s a legal difference between bio-children and stepchildren, and that would get even more complicated with co-spouses.

In the case of inheritance… I can see objections that someone who married into the family two years ago, with two kids in tow, should not inherit an equal share to the three spouses who’ve been involved with it for twenty-five years, and their kids who were raised by all three people.
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I don’t believe these are remotely unfixable problems–the point is, there are many scenarios in which “multiple spouses” will throw off the standard ways of dealing with legal situations. I am very much in favor of finding these fixes; I just recognize that the legal situation is murky and complicated, and that the state has an interest in avoiding creating legal quagmires.

So I don’t think that our system would be unable to adapt. Your poly friends haven’t come up with a framework that will work in our system for a lot of reasons, but “it can’t be done” cannot be one of them, since it’s done in other places.

Is there any real-world society that has adopted an “anything goes” standard when it comes to numbers? Not just “in our society elder men get to marry several wives,” but “in our society a man can marry several wives, AND 3 women 4 men and 3 transgender people can mutually marry each other, AND 3 men can marry each other, AND a woman can marry several husbands or wives who aren’t married to each other,” AND etc etc etc?

Because as I understand it from various opponents of SSM, that’s the future inevitably in store for Massachusetts, New York, and other states which recognize SSM. And that seems a lot more difficult to implement than, say, a fraternal husbands arrangement.

Which isn’t to say that it can’t happen. But it would require a large movement dedicated to making it happen; presumably one thing that movement would do is have lawyers writing model laws explaining how it all works. Lacking that large movement, however, it won’t happen, regardless of what happens with SSM. (I think you agree with me about that.)

I agree that for some odd reason, people apply vastly different classifications to
“Get MORE money FROM the government”
versus
“Pay LESS money TO the government.”

Now, you and I know that those are–if you assume that you’re going to pay more than zero in taxes–really equivalent . Getting $100 as a check and paying $100 less in taxes, both leave you with an extra $100. But for most people–and in my consumer law practice I see this all the time–they are not the same thing in the slightest.

So unless you’re literally getting a check in the mail, it’s not tagged as “getting something.”

As i was reading the cartoon, I thought of a probably-dumb version (I’m not a cartoonist) that somehoe incorporated average numbers to illustrate the vast extent of the benefits we’re talking about.

Run a $100,000 government tuition grant at 3% against a normal loan at 6% and you get a big number. Add up the cost of public school at the average per-student cost for 12 years and you get a big number.

And so on.

I say this because not do people think Sue didn’t “get anything,” but I’m willing to bet that if they did, they ALSO would think that Sue’s lifetime value was four figures, instead of high six figures.

Do sister-wives have more or less legal authority over each other than biological sisters?

I am unaware of any legal authority an adult woman has over her sister. I am also unaware of any legal authority my husband has over me. So I guess….none in all cases.

If one wife dies, is her property split equally among the remaining three spouses (which would be most relevant in case of a later divorce) and their children (and would those get the same share as her bio-children?), or do the husband & her bio-children inherit all of it?

In regular marriage under California intestacy law the property of a deceased spouse is split between the surviving spouse and the children. Here, spouses I guess. What’s wrong with that? If you make a Will of course that controls.

No modern American polygamy known to me personally uses the concept “bio-children.” Children of the marriage are everyone’s children. If it’s a polyandry it isn’t immediately apparent who the father is anyway. Me, I take people’s word for stuff like that.

(If one wife and the husband are hospitalized, who decides what medical care they get?)

It is a common misconception that your spouse automatically has the power to make your medical decisions for you. He or she or they do not. No one does, unless you have named someone to this post. No change here. The person who has the power to make those decisions is the person the sick one has designated.

But there are no … legal precedents.

Well, not yet.

To say that a culture which can operate a reverse credit-swap is incapable of dealing with polygamy is ridiculous. If it comes up we are perfectly capable of figuring it out.

If she doesn’t want to have such an overwhelming government, I recommend the emigrate to a place with more freedom. May I recommend Somalia as a libertarian paradise?