“After Somerville, there was a huge wave of excitement within the polyamorous community because there had been almost no movement in the political and legislative spheres for a long time,” Chen says. Alexander Chen`15, director of the LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic at HLS, works with students to provide legal protection to people in polyamorous relationships. It is clear that some of the polyamorous families described in the New Yorker article would be eligible if they were lucky enough to live in Somerville. The family can be made up of three, four or five, or a number of genders and orientations, provided they live together, are “engaged” and see themselves as a family. The ordinance would also cover Utah-type polygamous families, although no such family likely lives in Somerville. The rules say nothing at all about sexual relations; And that could very well apply (say) to a group of seniors moving in together and making the kind of “commitment” required by the regulation. They can hardly be “in love”, whether they are “poly” or others; But they seem to be eligible under the regulations. Following in Somerville`s footsteps, Cambridge City Council agreed to allow more than two people into a legal relationship. Inheritance tax is indeed one of the stumbling blocks. A person in a polyamorous family may own real estate, stocks and bonds, or other assets. Then he or she dies, without a will (a bad idea; but a common situation). Who gets the assets? According to local laws, if there is one, the spouse inherits some or all of it; Children will have rights; If there are none, the assets go to the nearest blood relative. A cousin in Australia, someone the deceased barely knew, is preferred to a dear friend who spent all her days with the deceased.
Do members of a polyamorous family have inheritance tax? So far, the answer seems to be clearly no. The Australian cousin will receive all the money; Dear friends, and members of an unrecognized family will get nothing. As a family and marriage lawyer, I noticed the concept of Throuples. After all, the members of a throutle can treat each other equally, but having equal rights before the law is another matter entirely. For example, two members of a thruple can decide to have a baby, but can that child legally have three parents? In this sense, two members of a union can certainly marry and choose to informally welcome someone else into their union, but that third person is likely to lose the legal benefits of marriage (x, y, z, etc.) if they are not allowed to do so. It is this kind of budget that is now seeking legitimacy and legal rights. But what would legal acceptance mean? Suppose a polyamorous household of three or four inhabitants, or the number of inhabitants. In this permissive age, we don`t care what they do in bed, any more than we do in the kitchen – as long as everyone agrees.
The question is whether rights of any kind result from polyamory. So far, the answer has been no. Will that change? Empirical evidence increasingly refutes concerns expressed by some about polyamorous relationships. “This research shows that these types of relationships are not unhealthy for families and children and can be healthy and stable,” Chen says. This data is “really important when you`re talking to legislators, judges and the public.” Not only is polyamory an important frontier in the struggle for civil and human rights, but the legal issues involved provide an exceptional educational opportunity for HLS clinic students, Chen says. Since last fall, clinical students have been working with city attorneys in California and Massachusetts to advance polyamorous laws, including laws prohibiting discrimination based on relationship structures. Aggarwal both championed and studied the project, including interviewing people “with very sad stories of discrimination.” “Educationally, it`s really interesting. I think the students really enjoyed working on polyamory rights for a variety of reasons,” says Chen, who was the first openly transgender editor of Harvard Law Review and has worked on LGBTQ+ litigation and advocacy at the National Center for Lesbian Rights and other organizations.
“On the one hand, the legal issues are very new, so it`s very interesting intellectually.” Additionally, because they focus on communities, students learn about different types of government structures and how to form coalitions as they work to pass local laws. The world is increasingly accepting of gender-sensitive behaviours, gender fluidity and equal rights for all. Multi-person relationships, whatever they are called, are also becoming commonplace, at least in the public consciousness. But like their ancestors, not all participants in polyamorous relationships are treated fairly in the eyes of the law. It is estimated that 4% to 5% of people living in the United States currently participate in polyamorous relationships, or what is also known as consensual or ethical non-monogamy, a practice in which partners have more than one sexual or romantic relationship with each other`s knowledge and consent. For comparison, non-monogamy is about as prevalent as the number of Americans who identify as LGBTQ, which is estimated at about 4.5% of the U.S. population. Earlier this year, Utah state officials decided to decriminalize polygamy, in part because laws criminalizing polygamy were “unenforceable,” according to Utah Sen. Deidre Henderson. Although polygamy is not legally recognized by this decision, it is no longer a crime. And although polygamists can still be fined if they are married to more than one person, they can no longer be imprisoned for it.
This decision also applies to polyamorists and others in non-monogamous consensual relationships in Utah. Not much at the moment. Several U.S. states (including California, Washington, Louisiana, and Rhode Island) have explicitly recognized multi-parent families such as stepfamilies, adoptive families, and families with CNM parents. The Uniform Filage Act (a recommended uniform legal framework for parent-child relationships in the United States) allows for the legal recognition of more than two parents. In June 2020, the Town of Somerville passed an ordinance authorizing more than two domestic partnerships, with residents legally able to recognize more than one binding relationship. Outside the United States, the Supreme Court of Newfoundland recently recognized the parental responsibility of a polyamorous family of three parents. While this decision is important for Somerville residents who live in multiple partner relationships, and symbolically for the broader NJC community, in practice it is somewhat limited in scope. As a municipal ordinance, for example, it cannot require employers based elsewhere to cover multiple partners of city residents in their health insurance or require the federal government to provide Social Security benefits to multiple partners.
However, this regulation can offer unprecedented legal protection to people in contact with multiple partners. In June 2020, the Somerville, Massachusetts City Council voted to recognize polyamorous home partnerships in the city, becoming the first U.S. city to do so. This measure was adopted so that people in polyamorous couples have access to their partner`s health insurance during the COVID-19 pandemic. [12] [13] [14] [15] The town of Somerville, Massachusetts, was one of the first cities to legally recognize polyamorous relationships.