People are bad at predicting what legal protections they may need in the future, and marriage covers a lot of them. Boilerplates are useful even in fields where there is pretty arbitrary freedom to customize. I didn’t try to write my own contract with the Cryonics Institute, for instance, though as far as I know they and I are entitled to enter into any contractual obligation we’d like.
People are bad at predicting what legal protections they may need in the future, and marriage covers a lot of them. Boilerplates are useful even in fields where there is pretty arbitrary freedom to customize.
Boilerplates are great and as you say they are available and in common usage even when there are arbitrary legal restrictions preventing all other possible arrangements. So there is no practical reason that we need to be prevented from making our own contracts.
Current marriage laws and traditional implementations thereof by the legal system are hostile to my interests for reasons including but not limited to being grossly sexist. It would take rather extreme extenuating circumstances for me to be willing to enter into such a contract. Mind you this government interference isn’t nearly as offensive to me as the laws preventing me from purchasing and using drugs as I choose including such things as anabolic androgenic steroids and cognitive enhancing drugs but at least the latter legal restrictions are of the kind that can be ignored in principle.
An example of a legal contract that cannot be entered in to: One partner agrees to have children with the other on the condition that in the case of separation they will not be obliged to provide ongoing financial payments to their former partner. Not being able to make such an arrangement means that couples who would otherwise have—and expect to benefit from—children. (Of course for signalling reasons current situations are more likely to describe their aversion in purely emotion based language without admitting to real reasons. The effect remains.)
Marriage isn’t just boilerplate for private agreements. It gives married people legal privileges: custody of children, hospital visiting rights, rights to decide partner’s medical treatment in an emergency, tax reductions in some jurisdictions (usually for joint-owned property or for inheritance between the married partners), and so on.
Lack of good boilerplate for marriage-like agreements isn’t the problem. In many states, private agreements cannot grant most of these legal rights. That’s why abolishing government-defined and -controlled marriage is a prerequisite to equal-rights private agreements.
People are bad at predicting what legal protections they may need in the future, and marriage covers a lot of them. Boilerplates are useful even in fields where there is pretty arbitrary freedom to customize. I didn’t try to write my own contract with the Cryonics Institute, for instance, though as far as I know they and I are entitled to enter into any contractual obligation we’d like.
Boilerplates are great and as you say they are available and in common usage even when there are arbitrary legal restrictions preventing all other possible arrangements. So there is no practical reason that we need to be prevented from making our own contracts.
Current marriage laws and traditional implementations thereof by the legal system are hostile to my interests for reasons including but not limited to being grossly sexist. It would take rather extreme extenuating circumstances for me to be willing to enter into such a contract. Mind you this government interference isn’t nearly as offensive to me as the laws preventing me from purchasing and using drugs as I choose including such things as anabolic androgenic steroids and cognitive enhancing drugs but at least the latter legal restrictions are of the kind that can be ignored in principle.
An example of a legal contract that cannot be entered in to: One partner agrees to have children with the other on the condition that in the case of separation they will not be obliged to provide ongoing financial payments to their former partner. Not being able to make such an arrangement means that couples who would otherwise have—and expect to benefit from—children. (Of course for signalling reasons current situations are more likely to describe their aversion in purely emotion based language without admitting to real reasons. The effect remains.)
Marriage isn’t just boilerplate for private agreements. It gives married people legal privileges: custody of children, hospital visiting rights, rights to decide partner’s medical treatment in an emergency, tax reductions in some jurisdictions (usually for joint-owned property or for inheritance between the married partners), and so on.
Lack of good boilerplate for marriage-like agreements isn’t the problem. In many states, private agreements cannot grant most of these legal rights. That’s why abolishing government-defined and -controlled marriage is a prerequisite to equal-rights private agreements.
Nothing wrong with boilerplates, when they’re not based on hundreds of years of sexist out-dated religious thought and enshrined in laws.