When multiple husbands and wives become legal in the future, how will social security be affected?

This will never happen.

Deuteronomy 21:15–17
If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, 16 when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. 17 He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father’s strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him.

I don’t see why it wouldn’t, @chyna, if all parties are willing.

^ Even if they are not in agreement, there is now no legal precedent to really bar it.

Polygamy is illegal in the US. Not sure how the folks in Utah get away with it.

Maybe today, but in the future it will, marriage has been redefined and they can’t say this marriage is redefined and that one isn’t, they’d make a mockery of themselves. Utah will be able to do it open and notoriously, no further penalties.

Multiple husbands and wives are legal, just not at the same time. And Social Security has figured it out.

It must be hard for you to sleep at night @Hypocrisy_Central thinking of all the dire consequences from our deviations from your understanding of the Bible.

@janbb It’s called serial monogamy, and it has the same repercussions as polyandry and polygamy (not to mention poly-amory!)

Well, my folks were married for 21 years (though in their 8th year, Mom got a letter from the Catholic church telling her the Church did not recognize her marriage to my Dad because my dad had been married, briefly, for about 6 months, right out of High School. Her name was Trixie!
Anyway, I remember Mom saying, “This is ridiculous! We’ve been married 8 years, have three kids, and the Catholic Church won’t recognize my marriage?”
She walked away from the Catholic idiocy, although we went to a Methodist Church, and didn’t go back to it until she started developing dementia.)

ANYway, I digress. So Mom and Dad were married 21 years, then divorced. He was married to his second wife for 20 some years when he died.
SS sent checks to both my Mom and his current wife.

Multiple wives? No thanks.

Women are very intelligent and complex. It takes a lifetime to learn and properly love one woman. Having more than one is a recipe for failure.

Anyway, to answer the question: wouldn’t they just split it equally amongst them? And/or, why not split it based on a last will and testament just like anything else?

@Yetanotheruser Well yeah, that was my point.

Biblical marriage.

The same way Solomon kept them all and cared for them.

1 Kings 11:3 And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart. KJV

Stop feeding the troll.

In my one experience, it was not split between my Mom and my Dad’s wife, who he married after Mom and Dad divorced. They each got a full SS check.

@Darth_Algar! Excellent!

I’d divide it down. Each of the 700 hundred wives should gets 1/700 of the pot. That might convince some women to look for and marry some lonely nice guy, instead of running after a biblical Donald Trump.

@Dutchess_III I recall seeing something like if they are married more than 10 years (15?) the second spouse gets a full check.

If you were married more than 10 years, the first wife gets ½ of her Ex’s or her own – whichever is larger. Not sure what the second wife gets.

I’m only telling you what was, @LuckyGuy and @janbb. That’s what I was told by her accountant friend, anyway.

@Dutchess_III I wasn’t disagreeing; just stating what I know it to be now from my own inquiries. Might have been different in the past.

@janbb That sounds familiar. I believe the second, or third, wife ALSO gets half of her husband’s SS (as long as they are married more than 10 years) or her own whichever is larger.
It looks like the hot setup for a high earner is to marry and divorce at 10 years and a day, as many women as possible- serially. That gives each of them half of the SS and shares the wealth (at taxpayers’ expense).

It’s not the multiple spouses I’m concerned about, but what happens when people are allowed to marry their pets. I mean what will the social security situation look like? How could the dog even apply for social security for goodness sakes! I mean service animals and animals working on farms could conceivably earn a living and pay into social security but what about those lazy old cats who just hang out sleeping all day? Are they just going to milk the system? This whole slippery slope thing is really worrying me.

Or not.

Well, I have no insight into your Social Security system, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask whether a challenge to anti-polygamy laws will follow from the legalization of gay marriage. Polyamory is a real thing, and if it’s between consenting adults, and marriage is now held to be a right, I can see this happening.

However, I think the consequences of legalizing polygamy are dire enough that it will probably not happen anytime soon. I suspect one of the main impediments is the fear of legitimizing the practices of religious cults like the FLDS. In a situation where young girls are raised in fundamentalist compounds, it becomes difficult to define consent. No one wants to make that even harder.

I think another hurdle to polygamy is that it would make it easier for con artists to have multiple spouses without getting in trouble. Many con artists marry their victims so they can legally take or use up all their money. Once the money is gone, they run off and marry someone else with a new supply of cash. Almost always, the new spouse has no idea that the con artist was (and still is) legally married to someone else.

It’s really difficult to prosecute someone who stole from you once you get married to them. It’s not illegal to spend your spouses money. BUT if your spouse was legally married to someone else before and during your marriage, the con artist can be legally charged with bigamy, which is a crime. It also makes your marriage to the con artist null and void. So then you can press charges for fraud and theft against them. I think polygamy would make things a whole lot messier for people who get caught in this situation.
––––

I think it’s very likely that polygamy causes many other legal difficulties as well. Could you take a second spouse without your first spouses’ consent? If you married a second spouse with your first spouses’ consent, what would happen if the spouses didn’t get along with each other, and each demanded that you divorce the other one? If you married someone who was unaware that his or her spouse as already married, would their marriage be legal? When there is a divorce, what custodial rights do non biological parents have over children they helped raise?

Now imagine bringing spouse number three in the mix. Would BOTH of your spouses require consent?.. It just gets more complicated…

With same sex marriage now legal, there are even more complications. If a man takes a second wife, are his wives married to each other? If his wives have a sexual relationship with each other without his consent, are they cheating on him? If the two wives hated each other and no longer wanted be married to each other, but still wanted to be married to the husband, and the husband refused to divorce either one, what would happen there? If the second wife is not considered married to the first wife, could she also have a second husband, who would not be married to the other husband or wife? Can you imagine the mess lawyers and judges would have with dividing property between a group of people who were all married to at least one member, but not all members of the group, some of them wishing to remained married to one person, but not the others?

You could potentially have a big mess where people were married by proxy who were also married to others by proxy. If your second wife had a second husband who had another wife, what relationship would you have to the husbands second wife of your wife? I got lost in that sentence… I can’t imagine living in a situation where I’d need a chart to explain my houshold’s marital situation and how I was or wasn’t related to any particular person within that entire relationship as a whole.

I have to hand it to you. You do come up with the doozies. In fact I’m beginning to suspect that that you must be getting paid to create so many.

I AM paid to create them. Shhhhh…the others here haven’t figured that out yet..

“thou dost thy office fairly”!

Social Security will be broke and gone before polygamy is legal.
Problem solved.

Paid or not, @keobooks makes good points about how messy it could get. Here is something else to ponder. Imagine a polygamous marriage where the original partners have exited. The marriage takes on an existence of its own. It could continue forever. Too weird for me to imagine. Polygamy is never going to be legal.

Betty Bowers explains Traditional Bible Based Marriage

This might help explain how polygamous marriages have worked in the past and could work in the future.

@LostInParadise I wrote a short story for a creative writing class with “eternal marriages” as a plot point. The marriages were polygamous, and began with two or more women banding together and selecting one husband. Whenever a member of the marriage died, they could be replaced. Eventually all of the original members of the marriage would die out, but it could continue on for several generations. The most powerful people in the society were all women who belonged to the largest and oldest marital units.

I know it hasn’t much to do with the question, but perhaps writing such a short story in college had kept up my curiosity about how polygamous marriages might legally work or not work in our own society. Hence my ability to think up about a zillion different scenarios.

I like that. Fiction is the only appropriate place for this idea.

I don’t know @LostInParadise I found
this out there already.

That didn’t take long did it?

@dappled_leaves However, I think the consequences of legalizing polygamy are dire enough that it will probably not happen anytime soon.
The climate can change quickly if those who want to practice it put together a slick public relations ploy. Even if they cannot get the Millenials on board, all they need is some hotshot attorneys to ramrod it through the legal system it will be hard for the law to cave in on itself and oppose it.

@ragingloli You misunderstood the question, reread the question slowly, then try it again.

@Yetanotheruser It’s called serial monogamy, and it has the same repercussions as polyandry and polygamy (not to mention poly-amory!)
Whatever, it has nothing to do with the polygamy coming legal in the future or social security.

@Dutchess_III In my one experience, it was not split between my Mom and my Dad’s wife, who he married after Mom and Dad divorced. They each got a full SS check.
I guess when multiple husbands and wives become legal the Feds better do something or their will be no more social security, they might just have to form some special tax to keep money in the well. If a man had 12 wives and dies, providing all the wives met the min years the marriage had to be in force, they will all get full benefit, equal to at least 8 other single couples.

@Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One Anyway, to answer the question: wouldn’t they just split it equally amongst them? And/or, why not split it based on a last will and testament just like anything else?
Are your SS benefits subject to will degree or is that fed mandated by law how it works and who will get what?

@Darth_Algar @zenvelo @tinyfaery You misunderstood the question, reread the question slowly, then try it again.

@janbb If you were married more than 10 years, the first wife gets ½ of her Ex’s or her own – whichever is larger. Not sure what the second wife gets.
Do you know of that is nationwide or will states get to choose for themselves?

@FlyingWolf It’s not the multiple spouses I’m concerned about, but what happens when people are allowed to marry their pets.
You have three questions you can ask a day, so ask that. THIS is not a question about marrying pets, just in case you missed the details or somehow failed to read them.

@keobooks I think another hurdle to polygamy is that it would make it easier for con artists to have multiple spouses without getting in trouble.
The courts are continuing to show even if people mistreat something it is not enough to prevent someone their rights.

Could you take a second spouse without your first spouses’ consent? If you married a second spouse with your first spouses’ consent, what would happen if the spouses didn’t get along with each other, and each demanded that you divorce the other one?
That is what lawyers are for, to work out the details, they have when kids pop up in cohabitation situations when the parents are not married, they worked through that, they will get through this.

When there is a divorce, what custodial rights do non biological parents have over children they helped raise?
Maybe close to what a man would have when he has kid with a woman he is not married to.

Now imagine bringing spouse number three in the mix. Would BOTH of your spouses require consent?.. It just gets more complicated…
Things will get more complicated (for a while), people will have their rights, and lawyers will get rich making sure they do; life will move on….

I know it hasn’t much to do with the question, but perhaps writing such a short story in college had kept up my curiosity about how polygamous marriages might legally work or not work in our own society. Hence my ability to think up about a zillion different scenarios.
How well it works, divorce rates, etc. is notwithstanding, all that matters is allowing the people to cobble together a family as they feel, because they are in love and adults able to do it.

@josie Social Security will be broke and gone before polygamy is legal.
Problem solved.
That, my friend, I think is the sad reality some will be blindsided with. I am training to get my securities license and have to wait on the state to redo the curriculum because they have to remove all references to social security, they are pretty much indicating people better stop relying on having social security for retirement, or part of their retirement; the latest Court –debacle- ruling will speed up that slide down the drain.

@LostInParadise Polygamy is never going to be legal.
That is what they used to say about certain marriages back through the 20s-50s but they are legal today, in US politics, never doesn’t always mean never.

@rojo That didn’t take long did it?
Thought it wouldn’t? The major stones, thickets, and tree stumps have been removed as well as the ruts filled. It will happen and quicker too since the heavy lifting has already been done by others.

@Hypocrisy_Central Nationwide since Social Security is only a Federal program.

@Hypocrisy_Central “The climate can change quickly if those who want to practice it put together a slick public relations ploy. Even if they cannot get the Millenials on board, all they need is some hotshot attorneys to ramrod it through the legal system it will be hard for the law to cave in on itself and oppose it.”

I just don’t think the Supreme Court would accept it. Not within the next couple of decades, anyway. We’re both guessing; who knows. Widespread public support is even less likely. I mean, look at the results of this informal poll you’ve conducted among the liberal community of Fluther.

^ Not within the next couple of decades, anyway.
The gauntlet has been thrown, most of the heavy lifting already accomplished, the path may not take as long, it could, but as has been judges can nullify the will of the people in favor of the Constitution. I would bet there is a better than average chance I will see it before i die.

@Hypocrisy_Central, mine was a tongue and cheek response designed primarily to highlight the ridiculousness of the question. But you knew that.

Mine was a response to the inhering ironic hypocrisy of the question.
You are obviously judging and looking down on any potential future legalisation of polygamous marriage, while in your so called religion, one of 48 prophets had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
And, as shown by the rules regarding which off spring inherits in the case of a guy with multiple wives, polygamous marriage was legal.

@Hypocrisy_Central

I understood the question just fine. You missed (probably willfully) the sarcastic nature of my post.

^^ Mine was a response to the inhering ironic hypocrisy of the question.
My response was predicated on an aloof incoherent comment that had nothing to do with the question as of the person could not read well enough to know what the question was. If a person will not eat a meal at a diner they do not like, why would they waste their precious time on a question they think is ironically hypocritical, unless they lust like question they think are that way, though they are not.