----- Original Message -----
From: "James Rogers" <jamesr@best.com>
>
> On my personal rant issue of marriage specifically, the contents and
> administration of marriage contracts would be utterly unacceptable if
> applied to business in most States. Yet the State basically defines those
> rules by fiat, giving the individual little leeway in tailoring their
> specific "relationship contract" to meet there specific needs and desires.
> In theory one could create a custom legal surrogate for State defined
> marriage, but it would take a lot more effort. I would prefer to
eliminate
> marriage as a special statutory contract altogether, as even if you accept
> the basic premises of the statutory forms, the current incarnations are
> generally sub-optimal for most people. Eliminating the "one size fits
all"
> marriage contract would probably go a long way towards reducing the
divorce
> rate. For starters, I think many people in today's western society would
be
> better served by time limited contracts (none of this "in perpetuity"
crap)
> that have to be renewed, renegotiated, or simply dropped on regular
> intervals. This would force the contracts to have proper exit/termination
> clauses, the general lack of which is why divorce courts are so busy these
> days.
>
> -James Rogers
> jamesr@best.com
>
This has been done in various legal systems. Sh'ia Islam recognises two
kinds of marriage - Nikaa (for life but can be dissolved on certain grounds)
and Mutaa (a temporary contract with a renewal option, term can be anything
from an hour to [IIRC] ninetynine years). Ethiopian Christianity has a
similar system-apparently they have a third type which is binding beyond the
grave! Actually, in very recent history the actual legal practice of
marriage was very flexible, due to the existence of institutions such as
"handfasting" (essentially a trial marriage for a year and a day), "common
law marriage", "irregular marriage" and folk divorce such as "wife sale". It
was the state which put a stop to this throughout Europe. In the British
Empire the key event was Hardwicke's Marriage Act in 1753, so you can blame
it all on that. Steve Davies
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:25 MDT