Posted on 03/28/2013 12:46:11 PM PDT by mbarker12474
Once marriage between multiple parties is legalized on equal protection grounds, what are the possibilities and realities regarding consortiums of persons getting legally married, in a commercial business arrangement, in order to share some benefit of marriage (such as health insurance, compelled under law to be provided to married parties)?
Could the enterprising businessman, for example, charge a fee and marry himself to thousands of strangers, allowing these customers to share in his health insurance, and any other rights accruing to married parties?
Are there any obstacles to this happening? I see none.
Such as being poor?
Facile and soundly based legal arguments before the Supreme Court are important. This past week Justices were dropping clues, but some lawyers are blind, deaf and dumb.
I haven’t studied Roe v. Wade as closely as I have the Natural born Citizen eligibility requirement, but there are states which have tightened up their laws on abortion. As long as a state hasn’t made it flat-out illegal, existing laws allow controls to be applied to minimize the procedure’s occurrence to those instances where it is available only in a hospital and to women whose lives are in grave danger if the pregnancy isn’t terminated. This would go well towards reducing the murders of babies resulting from abortion on demand.
However marriage, like driving vehicles, is regulated and licensed by the several states - NOT by the Federal government. The U.S.Constitution clearly states that powers not specifically assigned to the Federal government are left to the several states, and that is how I perceived some of the comments made by some Justices at SCOTUS this past week.
My personal feelings on this issue is that states should solely issue civil partnerships (a contract), and not marriage licenses. Marriage should only exist as part of traditional religious practices.
This would result in homosexuals and their supporters having to sue religions about marriage, not the states. Religions have First Amendment protections, as do many other groups who are very, very anti-traditional.
I imagine the result would be farcical, homosexual-based churches and synagogues, but those wouldn’t last long.
That’s one way (note that, for estate tax purposes, “poor” means having an estate valued at less than $5.25 million).
Above the exemption there are plenty of estate planning strategies that can reduce or eliminate estate taxes, using trusts and whatnot. Anyone with an estate above the exemption really should have a competent attorney & accountant who can help structure things efficiently.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.