As always, it depends on what state you’re in and what the inheritance laws are.
AFAIK (IANAL), you can give power of attorney to anyone you want.
As far as inheritance, it’s not that easy. Let’s say our friend Jeeves has a kid from a previous relationship. And let’s say that this kid turns out to be completely rotten and undeserving of Jeeves’ vast estate when he dies. If Jeeves dies without a will (and dies w/o being legally married to his boyfriend), Jeeves’ kid would get all the money. Never mind that Jeeves has lived with his man for 25 years and hasn’t spoken to his kid in 10. The only way Jeeves’ man is gonna get anything is if Jeeves has a will and specifically states in his will “I want all my stuff to go to my partner” – and even then, some states won’t let you completely cut your kid out of your will. Some will make you give a certain percentage/amount. (Here in WV I think it’s like, $100.)
However, if Jeeves were married to a woman and died without a will, in most states everything would automatically go to his wife, kids or not. (The kids couldn’t get their hands on it till the wife died.)
I presume that the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Vermont are no longer part of Western society, then?
Also, what you’ve defined is, for the most part, a voidable marriage rather than a void one. The former category is one for which an annulment can be sought and received; the latter is, on discovery, no marriage at all. E.g., if a disabled veteran who has lost use of his private parts chooses to marry a woman who is aware of his disability, she may at a later date choose to seek the voiding of the marriage on the basis that she was not aware of how much she would miss having sex, but until and unless she does so, they have a valid marriage that may last for decades. A man ostensibly marrying his grandmother or sister, on the other hand, is a void marriage – the courts will refuse to take legal recognition that it ever happened.
Marriage has many other functions beyond procreation and the regulation of sex, and the courts have on occasion taken judicial cognizance of this. I would like to see a cite for that comment.
Only in places that have defined a valid marriage as being only between a man and a woman (with the obvious questions relating to transsexuals thrown in for good measure).
I dunno. Why would you want to post on this message board when you could sit home and masturbate instead?
Maybe because there’s more to life than sex? Because when you love someone, you want to provide for them, ensure that nothing but death will separate you, have legal and social approval on the union that you and your beloved feel between yourselves?
First point: adoption. Second point: foster parenting. Third point: many heteromarriages are childless. And I Pitted the last person to insult my (childless) marriage as “not socially functional” – I’m restraining myself from repeating that.
You may have heard of the recent SCOTUS case of Lawrence v. Texas? In about 19 states, such unions are not only not equivalent to a common law marriage; they’re legally proscribed and those who enter into them are open to conviction as felons. Besides which, I’m not sure how many states still recognize “common law marriages” but it would be my guess that no more than 15 do.
In addition to all this, I need to add to Bryan Ekers’s point the question of “public policy” – wills can be challenged, particularly by blood relatives, and will often be decided on the basis of a nebulous concept called “public policy” – which means that if your state legislature disapproves of your sexuality or whatever has motivated you to make a will leaving all or most of your estate to someone not a relative by blood or a legally recognized marriage, your will stands about the chance of survival of a dry-ice snowball on Venus.
If I really applied myself, if I was willing to give 110%, if I pushed myself to my very limits, I could do both.
There were days I thought my goal made Don Quixote’s dreams looks positively practical in comparison. I’ll never forget the day I fractured both wrists. It was so tempting to just quit. But, I stuck with it.
Then came the day I climbed to the top of my Everest. The view is spectacular, and I just feel so fulfilled.
When I testified in front of the House of Commons Justice Committee regarding same-sex marriage, one of the questions that kept coming up was whether or not a minister would have to marry a same-sex pair against his or her religious conscience.
Answer: no. Even though divorced people are permitted to marry under Canadian law, a Catholic clergyman does not have to marry divorced people since that contravenes his teachings. There is no reason to suppose it would be any different for gay people.
[rant] Essentially, in other words, the people who kept bringing up the argument were bitching that their clergy were having their religious freedom infringed by what other people in other religions were doing with their own lives in other churches and city halls. (The extent to which we are having our religious freedom infringed by not having our religions’ marriages recognized by the state the same as theirs’ is, of course, apparently irrelevant.) [/rant]
