So have a funny story about Alberta:
Alberta is one of our more socially conservative provinces. (Many of you in the US may still find this comparison ā¦ well. Look everything is relative and some things are complicated. Anyway.) It joined New Brunswick, PEI, Nunavut and the NWT in not allowing same-sex partnerships until literally forced to by the Federal Civil Marriages Act in 2005. Everyone else had come up with their own provincial equivalent in the years preceding.
But Alberta was mad. It was REALLY MAD. It did not want to actually acknowledge same sex marriage. So in 2003 it had tried to get around the issue in a weird, passive-aggressive, Alberta-classic way by insisting that marriage was this Particular Sacred Thing, but in fact everyone else could have a totally non-specific voluntary life-partnership thing called āadult interdependent relationshipsā which was essentially the same as common-law marriage/civil-unions except that it totally removed the assumption of a sexual relationship and, in some ways, the limitation of that assumption.
The thing about it is that it also replaced the common-law marriage definition, which means that much LIKE common-law marriage, you can find yourself in one without meaning to - and this provides a number of legal rights. Including parental and estate rights. The rights it doesnāt provide, overall, are those covered by federal tax requirements (you have to meet the federal definition of ācommon-lawā to get those), and a couple of really limited specific powers particular to Canadian marriage law. The big ones are all covered.
Part of this is just to share a funny story about how Alberta accidentally became the province with one of the most progressive sets of āmarriageā laws literally because it was throwing a tantrum about same-sex marriage, but part of it is also to note that it is actually possible to take this as a model to lobby your own governments to actually work through redefining these things. (Hell, even for fellow Canadians to a. encourage their provincial governments to follow suit and b. get the federal government to do likewise).
Itās also to note differences between jurisdictions, as it being Tumblr these things often get shared way beyond the specific jurisdiction the person with legal experience is speaking from, and jurisdictions do have differences: what rights and responsibilities you can and canāt obtain and secure via things that are not marriage will depend on what the actual law is in the jurisdiction youāre living in. I understand that this can vary even more wildly between states than between provinces, so itās a good idea to know what applies to your specific state, especially if there are children involved.
(For example, in Canadian law whether or not a non-DNA-non-legally-adopted partner of a DNA/legally-adoptive parent has parental rights will depend specifically on the provable nature of the relationship with that partner, because our laws and the interpretation of those laws have come increasingly to consider the child and their psychological state as the definitive and ruling part of such decisions. Itās still recommended that, if you are non-DNA-related, you go through a formal legal adoption of the child as one of its parents if possible, but even if it is not possible, it is not as such your legal relationship with its other legal parent that is the Deciding Factor. If youāve been actively parenting and contributing financial and emotional and behavioural support for ten years, then you have grounds to have that parental relationship acknowledged. But that is specific to our jurisdiction.)
Likewise I know both in Canada AND in the US there are things that are true at a state level that are not necessarily at a federal and vice versa; this can be particularly important if youāre travelling throughout your country, and so on.
It is a really, really good idea to know, in detail, the marriage and marriage-like-relationships laws of the jurisdiction you reside in. Itās a good idea to know if youāre in a common-law jurisdiction or not because you could accidentally end up legally bound to someone if youāre not anticipating common-law rules where they apply. (I feel like this should show up as an Accidental Marriage trope more often than it does.) It also tells you, as you embark on something like QPT life, whether it might actually be worth getting legally married, or whether you can get the rights and protections that matter to you without doing so.
And, for that matter, if you want to explicitly avoid doing so, because I stg some people do in fact get married without realizing the power that this gives their spouse over their life, even though itās the default of our culture.
And yes, every step of this absolutely fucks over poly people. :) It took a very smart lawyer who had experience in the area to cobble together equivalents for a close friend recently. There are very fundamental changes that would be required to do anything about that.
