Rachel Madow - 'State Mulls Ban On All Marriage'

[texas_ex2000]

Maddow "State Mulls Ban On All Marriage" ?? Requisite OU sucks blah blah.

Ok, now on to politics. WTF is she talking about? Is she saying Oklahoma will arrest you if you have a wedding? What a moron. Isn't she whining every other day for the government to get out of people's bedrooms?

More states need to do this. Government recognition and subsidization of marriage is discriminatory against single people, gay and straight. Single folks shouldn't pay more taxes so that married idiots can get bad mortgages, procreate, cheat on each other, and get divorced with the Government's blessing. F that $%^&.

 

[ProdigalHorn]

She's a proven liar and likely has no clue about what she's saying.

 

[Mr. Deez]

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[militaryhorn]

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[Michtex]

or

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[texas_ex2000]

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[Mr. Deez]

Tex2000 and MH,

I'm well aware that there are legal and contractual methods to account for assets in almost any relationship (including a marriage). However, you have to consider some very real problems with assuming that can be a general solution.

What you're advocating already exists - premarital agreements (aka prenuptial agreements). They just aren't used very often, even though they're financially wise for pretty much everybody. Why not? Two reasons. First, they're far more expensive than most middle class and poor families are willing to pay. Second, most spouses (especially wives) want to presume the marriage will last forever and don't want to prepare for even the possibility that the marriage might fail. Hell, I'm a lawyer. I know it's smart to have a prenup. I could have afforded to get one. Despite that, I don't have one, and most lawyers I know don't have one, because money is only one small reason why people are reluctant to get one.

In short, while eliminating marriage (and therefore divorce) from the law would encourage people to get prenups, most people still won't get one. Some system (such as divorce) has to account for the no-prenup relationship, which will still be the rule, not the exception.

I know. The libertarian is going to say "screw 'em." They were stupid not to hire a lawyer and get a prenup. However, the public isn't going to see it that way. Allowing a long-term de facto marriage to break up and not account for assets (and tell the children to go **** themselves and to expect no protection from the court system) is going to frequently work an injustice that the public (and therefore lawmakers) simply isn't going to allow.

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[texas_ex2000]

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[Mr. Deez]

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[texas_ex2000]

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[Horns11]

"The women have us by the balls, and that is never going to change."

TRUTH

 

[NJlonghorn]

I have some libertarian tendencies, and I find the idea of reducing government interference in daily life quite appealing. When taken to the logical extreme, however, the philosophy becomes a cloud of wishful thinking untethered to any semblance of reality. You have drifted off with that cloud.

As Deez explained, marriage is basically a default contract. All you have to do is get married and, voila, you have rights. If you and your spouse want to alter the default contract, you can -- but most couples chose not to do so.

If you do away with marriage and require people to enter into an explicit property agreement, most people will not do so. You will have turned a small problem (people who don't protect themselves by getting married) into a huge problem (people who don't protect themselves by entering into a property agreement).

Over the last few years, most of the monumentally bad ideas have come out of the Obama administration. I'm glad to know you have decided to chip in.

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[texas_ex2000]

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[Mr. Deez]

Tex2000,

The fundamental problem with your rationale is that you think a marriage license is simply another form of a property agreement when it isn't.. A property agreement (like any contract) is formed when there's a meeting of the minds of the parties to determine how property will be divided in the event of a divorce. They write the rules themselves, and the person with bargaining power/leverage usually gets to dictate the terms of the agreement, and the person without leverage can take it or leave it.

A marriage license doesn't address property division at all, and the couple rarely, if ever, discusses the issue, because they don't anticipate getting divorced. Furthermore, even if they considered it, 99 percent of people who get married have no friggin' clue what would happen to their property if they divorced. The property division that comes with a regular marriage is imposed by law. You don't have to have bargaining power. You don't have to be smart enough to come up with anything. You don't have to be a smooth negotiator. The law simply gives you rights. That's not an agreement, and it isn't like an agreement.

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[texas_ex2000]

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[NJlonghorn]

If we went down this road, alternate versions of the form would quickly be developed. Some would be fair and others wouldn't -- and most people would have no way to discern which is which. People who know what they are doing would say "here, honey, sign this" and their spouse (or whatever you call them) would be stuck with an unfair deal.

Premarital agreements are inherently sophisticated, and should not be used unless the parties are sophisticated (or wealthy enough to hire competent advisors).

 

[Mr. Deez]

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[texas_ex2000]

Dezz,

Fun topic and strong points. You obviously have the legal expertise. Maybe we can find another topic to argue on, like financial markets, where I'm not outclassed. This is my last post.

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[Mr. Deez]

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