The awkward stares of disgust in public, mysongynistic and misandristic rhetoric from everyone socially conditioned by society and religion (which may include family and friends) is only one aspect of what you can expect when choosing to live life with multiple partners. Legal matters is unavoidable since polyandry, as a polygamous custom, is illegal in all 50 states under the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862. How you handle this can determine the longevity of your union.
Now you can move to the countries where polyandry is legal, but we know realistically the chances of people dismantling their entire lives to migrate to another country. So, everyone stays here in conformity, choosing one partner as their husband to claim.
When faced with the statement, "only your spouse may enter with the patient", if this wasn't discussed or properly prepared for prior to the wife's medical emergency, the husbands are now in a position to choose who will say "im her husband" and be granted access to be at her bedside.
Even though no ones opinion is more important than another and you've mastered your distribution of your time and affection. No matter the lengths you've gone to ensure that there is equality amongst your husbands, this situation has the potentially to arouse feelings of inadequacy in any person.
In that instant they are forced to choose... "Who would she like to be there more? I i want to go but i know he wants to go too, maybe I'll go this time and he goes next time; but what if he wants to go first? Does it matter who goes first? Is the man she had first more important and therefore is her "true" husband by default?
Usually the one who does the least amount of thinking, speaks first and goes. Which gives a sense of relief for the other husband so he no longer has to choose but slight sadness as now the situation has watered those seeds planted by the naysayers. These feelings can be buried but will be watered everytime a situation arises where he's not recognized as her husband.
The best way to prevent this is to have this discussion early and incorporate contractual agreements to ensure the validity of, terms and conditions of each relationship.
As of june 29, 2020, The Somerville City Council of Massachusetts, unanimously approved an ordinance that allowed groups of three or more adults to form domestic partnerships. They expanded its notion of family to include people who are maintaining consenting relationships with multiple partners.
“I don’t think it’s the place of the government to tell people what is or is not a family,” Mr. Davis, who is a lawyer, said at a meeting last week. “Defining families is something that historically we’ve gotten quite wrong as a society, and we ought not to continue to try and undertake to do so.”
The issue arose recently because of the COVID-19 pandemic, as Somerville residents who aren’t married came to councilors concerned about not having the ability to visit sick partners in the hospital and the city doesn't have a domestic partnership ordinance, Councilor Lance Davis told the Boston Globe.
Under its new domestic partnership ordinance, the city of Somerville now grants polyamorous groups the rights held by spouses in marriage, such as the right to confer health insurance benefits or make hospital visits.
“People have been living in families that include more than two adults forever,” Mr. Scott said. “Here in Somerville, families sometimes look like one man and one woman, but sometimes it looks like two people everyone on the block thinks are sisters because they’ve lived together forever, or sometimes it’s an aunt and an uncle, or an aunt and two uncles, raising two kids.”
So the potentiality of the US legalizing poyandry is not as slim as we thought just as gay marriage being legalized was also unheard of at one time.
