The Polyamorous Neighbors You Don't Know

[haele]

57. Serial Monogamists run into the same situation.

Semi-custodial stepchildren, who might end up two or three steps away from one of the original birth parents.
Which spouse gets how much of the estate - the first wife, or the fourth wife?

I've seen it at work. My father-in-law had five wives, lucky for him - only the first gave him children, and the last two had children from a different father, so the pre-nup was still in place by the time he died. He divorced the first three but was a fairly willing non-custodial parent according to my husband and his sister.

Wife # four was a widow with her own rather large estate (her husband was wealthy. So, when FiL died, the joint property that stayed with him through marriage #5 went to her children in accordance with that pre-nup.

Wife #five's children aren't even her own, they were her husband's, and wanted nothing to do with his ex who had run off with someone when the youngest was two. Wife # 5 ended up with legal guardianship, so when she divorced her Husband #1, the kids decided that they'd rather live with her than their own dad. (They were grown by the time she married FiL)
She's a sweetie, and had known Wife #4, so she had no issues when the time came to deal with my FiL's estate.

Now, if Wife #three had children with him as she had been apparently bugging him to do (and that was one of the issues that lead to that divorce, according to my spouse), you betcha there'd still be a huge fight over how his estate was to be split up - and he died three years ago.

FiL was a retired flag level Air Force officer and was high up in business, living off a very nice set of retirement packages. So, who gets his pension(s), retirement, and SSI? Wife # 1, married to him for twelve years, who helped him get his degree and stayed married to him five years into his Air Force career as a young officer? Wife #2, who saw him through six years as a mid-level officer's wife? Wife #3 who played the hostess role for a flag level officer's wife for almost ten years? Wife #5, his survivor, married to him for fourteen years?

Each has a survivor's claim to his estate, because he made his money with them at one point or another. The only difference between his situation and that of a polygamist's would be dependent on the ex-spouse's legal ability to make a claim. (I think wives # 2 and #3 are either deceased or have gotten re-married, so they no longer have a claim.)

Marriage as a legal entity is dependent on the clauses that are set into the agreement. That's why there's a big business in pre-nuptials; and there honestly would be very little difference between polygamy and serial monogamy when it comes to that.

Haele