Interesting. The first time I read about this was in Heinleins The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. My personal opinion is that the construction should be legal but not neccessarily have the same custody and tax rules. The same rules is difficult anyway because you can’t just ignore one part (the gender) but need to add lot cases resulting from extra element(s) present. The biological aspects (one biological father and mother) could be dealt with in analogy to adoption as is done with surrogates. But the many real life/law pragmatics of pair-relationships (marriage customs, custody, heritage,...) probably make it difficult to treat this the same way a ‘traditional’ marriage.
You would have to change a lot, but there is a natural basis to judge on: there’s already the tax-law definition of ‘household’, and you could allow any or all of a household to file as a unit. It would also be very feasible to make a simple formula for the tax rate given the number of wage-earners in the household. The only trick would be dealing appropriately with teenager’s first jobs.
Honestly, I think those would get easier rather than harder. If you no longer have a set limit on ‘roles’ in the marriage, you don’t have cultural intuitions about correct outcomes, and designing a system that is simple and easy to execute gets easier.
Interesting. The first time I read about this was in Heinleins The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. My personal opinion is that the construction should be legal but not neccessarily have the same custody and tax rules. The same rules is difficult anyway because you can’t just ignore one part (the gender) but need to add lot cases resulting from extra element(s) present. The biological aspects (one biological father and mother) could be dealt with in analogy to adoption as is done with surrogates. But the many real life/law pragmatics of pair-relationships (marriage customs, custody, heritage,...) probably make it difficult to treat this the same way a ‘traditional’ marriage.
You would have to change a lot, but there is a natural basis to judge on: there’s already the tax-law definition of ‘household’, and you could allow any or all of a household to file as a unit. It would also be very feasible to make a simple formula for the tax rate given the number of wage-earners in the household. The only trick would be dealing appropriately with teenager’s first jobs.
On the contrary, I think divorce and child custody would be the thorniest issue (as it is in binary marriage divorce).
Honestly, I think those would get easier rather than harder. If you no longer have a set limit on ‘roles’ in the marriage, you don’t have cultural intuitions about correct outcomes, and designing a system that is simple and easy to execute gets easier.
I don’t know enough about U.S. laws. But from my understanding here in Germany it would be quite complicated...