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What I learned from half a lecture on family law

1. It's called a "shotgun wedding" because the pregnant girl's father would march the baby daddy there at gunpoint. I never knew that.

2. You can marry your cousin in Massachusetts. But you can't marry your step-grandparent, your in-laws, or your grandchild's spouse. (So K's future child's future wife is safe.)

3. You can get an annulment for fraud regarding an essential aspect of the marriage. Lying about your religion, about your sexual proclivities, about whether you're able to have kids: all fraud. Lying about your salary, job, or economic prospects: not fraud.

This immediately called to mind the NYT article I read a few months ago about the woes of Westchester wives who were bitter that their Wall Street husbands were now unemployed and asking them to spend less. The wives all protested that they were keeping up their part of the deal (presumably, checking the Nannycam, making sure the kids were suitably Prada-clad, and attending regular Pilates sessions) but the husbands were no longer keeping up theirs. One of them literally said, "This wasn't what I bargained for." I think she would disagree about whether economics are an essential aspect of the marriage.

Class-baiting aside, I think the idea that economics are never an essential aspect of a marriage is a pretty romantic view for the state to have. If someone claims to be a millionaire and it turns out they're in massive debt and you just hitched your finances to theirs, shouldn't you be able to get out of it if you want to?

Full post as published by Magic Cookie on July 08, 2009 (boomark / email).