Forum: Story Recommendations

3-5 would be the best.

Almost any story where they stay together over a number of years it's legal due to the laws on de facto marriages

Where and when matters a lot. All but one or two of the US states eliminated common law marriage in the late 19th century as part of the push to outlaw interracial marriage in the post Civil War period. It's hard to ban certain marriages when no one needs government permission to get married.

It's hard to ban certain marriages when no one needs government permission to get married.

There were other legal problems with Common Law Marriages as well, specifically with regards to inheritance disputes. People would leave last wills and testaments leaving their estate to their children or something/somebody other than the common law wife, and they'd then challenge it on the grounds of being the wife and community property/etc. Or vice versa, the kids would challenge the validity of their being married under common law.

Without a paper trail to document the marriage did in fact happen, it makes it difficult to prove in court. (And the whole distinction of two people living under the same roof for a long period of time, but not being "in that kind of relationship")

somebody other than the common law wife, and they'd then challenge it on the grounds of being the wife and community property

My understanding is that the majority of states ended recognition of common law marriages long before the legal concept of "community property" in marriage was established. Even today, not all states have "community property" laws.

Paradise Lagoon

Thanks but that's too short as i generally don't read anything under 300KB.

I have already read best of both worlds and lucky jim, thanks tho.

Scrub the Solomon Islands. They had a 15 year civil war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Assistance_Mission_to_Solomon_Islands

Its as if polygamy and domestic harmony don't coincide.

From my understanding the only reason polygamy worked in the past was due to the fact that most men were killed in wars and most women were submissive and i doubt that "domestic harmony" would even exist then.

It's generally why most author's don't write about polygamy in modern times because it just wouldn't work in this day and age. It would be very interesting reading a 2019 harem novel that covers topics like feminism, tinder, instagram, mgtow, incels, thots, etc, especially if you try doing one that doesn't have any sharing or wife swapping which makes it a lot harder to write.

In "The Millionaire Next Door" by Lazlo Zalezac there is a scene where the MC and the female members of his harem sign a number of legal documents including power of attorney, wills, and insurance papers that were designed to provide the same legal protections that a marriage would provide.

Would that even hold up in court? If it did i would assume there would be other ramifications.

I have followed AWLL since the beginning but that's not really what i'm looking for right now as there's really only 2 real "wives" as the rest are more in the vain of "guest lovers" and even then he still only "legally" marries 1.

Wait, what?
I'm pretty sure that, officially, Islam has rules for one man having multiple wives, and they seem to be doing all right. Similarly the historical societies that strayed from the simple one-man-one-woman model could be prosperous as well, just that the Catholic church with their model of thought-control out-competed them.

I'm pretty sure that, officially, Islam has rules for one man having multiple wives

My understanding, is that those rules also require the man to be capable of financially supporting all of his wives. I think that if you actually looked at Islamic societies where Polygamy is legal, actual instances of it would be rarer than you think.

My understanding is that the long term natural gender ratio at birth is actually slightly female heavy at something around 105F/100M. So society could tolerate some polygamy even with a natural gender ratio as long as it doesn't become too common.

My understanding is that the long term natural gender ratio at birth is actually slightly female heavy at something around 105F/100M. So society could tolerate some polygamy even with a natural gender ratio as long as it doesn't become too common.

Unfortunately I can't provide citations at the moment, but I believe that the natural ratio is either quite accurate balance (at least for longer term averages over large areas) or even slightly skewed to male side, but subject to quite high fluctuations due to cultural and other factors, and, believe or not, ecological factors such as hardships of life. On that base I might try to claim that 105F/100M birth ratio was observed in stable and prosperous society, while warzones may see up to 100F/110M ratios.

There is tendency to have more females than men even during peacetime, but not so much because of birth ratios, but due to higher mortality of males by just about any cause, in all age groups, that's even before naturally and culturally coded tendencies of aggressive behavior and higher risk taking in general. Since males are expendable, it makes sense from species standpoint for them to be experimentalists, explorers and expansion leaders.

Where I live, that statics might be over a decade old, but it was rubbed in everyone's nose how bad structural problems we have as a country having something like 117F/100M total average with 100F/103M birthrate.

Where I live, that statics might be over a decade old, but it was rubbed in everyone's nose how bad structural problems we have as a country having something like 117F/100M total average with 100F/103M birthrate.

Age groups are important to something like that. Sight unseen I'd be willing to bet the ratio is particularly high among women 27-50 years old in most former USSR states.

On business, I've been to Russia (including Siberia), Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Latvia, Belarus, Lithuania, and Romania between 1992 and 2003. The disparity was particularly notable by simple observation during the earlier visits. It was grossly obvious in Georgia and Ukraine earlier on. In the last two, if you swung a dead cat in a crowd, 3 out of 5 people you hit would be women.

I've never seen a study for why that is, but given the economic, social, and post war conditions after the fall of the USSR, it seems clear the shortage of men had a root cause. Much less having been aggravated by substance abuse and generally elevated levels of violence.

All that said, those areas are not good candidates to determine a natural ratio. Especially when taking into account the general level of disarray official records were in during the immediate aftermath.

Balancing out the rest of the world, I'd put money on a natural ratio of slightly more males up until 18 or so, and falling off in favor of females by the age of 30.

Where I live, that statics might be over a decade old, but it was rubbed in everyone's nose how bad structural problems we have as a country having something like 117F/100M total average with 100F/103M birthrate.

Age groups are important to something like that. Sight unseen I'd be willing to bet the ratio is particularly high among women 27-50 years old in most former USSR states.

"Natural" Birth rates likely skew female, if only for the matter that studies indicate that during pregnancy, women are far more likely to miscarry a male child "in the event of stress" than they are a female one. (It also makes a degree of sense from an evolutionary standpoint, as males can father children for a long time, while women would be the bottleneck, so selecting very young males out of the gene pool in an unstable situation is a beneficial trait as it means fewer unproductive mouths to feed)

Then from there, you progress into child mortality numbers, where males tend to do a far more remarkable job of finding ways to kill themselves, intentionally or not.

So when you pair both things together, your adult population is likely to skew (slightly) in favor of women absent an artificial selection bias being applied during pregnancy.

I'm not saying it isn't possible, just that societies where polygamy is wide spread don't seem to prosper.

Polygamy could be legal without it necessarily being wide spread.

And the stability problem with such societies isn't directly due to the polygamy. The problem is large numbers of men with no prospects to start a family of their own. Those men tend to become malcontents and trouble makers.

Look at China, it's possible for a society to develop that problem WITHOUT polygamy.

A large number of men have to be killed, expelled or neutered for it to work on a societal level.

Killed or expelled, yes. Neutered, not particularly. In a near real world scenario, you aren't going to neuter that many men without having problems. Do you expect them to be happy about it?

Of course, there are ways to skew the gender ratio at birth in either direction, see China.

China has developed the problem by creating a shortage of women through industrial infanticide. 30,000,000 baby girls were murdered at birth so they parents could have a chance at a son under the One Child policy.
They are now applying the polygamist solution of war and colonization through genocide of Uyghur men and marrying off the girls to Chinese men. They are colonizing Africa, Australia and Canada. They are preparing for total war in the South China Sea and their neigbors are quietly building up response.

Neutering was a specific solution in the expanding Islamic world. Male slaves were castrated. The current Arab Islamic solution to excess males is war and mass execution of captive men.

Modern Western culture appears to be using psychological neutering. Promote hypergamy among young females, a form of short term polygamy, convince young men they have no chance and addict them to porn, anime or video games as a substitute.

China has developed the problem by creating a shortage of women through industrial infanticide.

I'm aware of how they got there.

A large number of men have to be killed, expelled or neutered for it to work on a societal level.

Hmm, in David Weber's Honorverse, the Grayson birth ratio is about 1:3 and IIRC in one of the later books it's found out it was no natural adaption to the deadly Grayson environment but genetic manipulation unknown to the public.

HM.

For the people who don't know the series, Grayson has toxic levels of metal everywhere i. e. dust. The engineers had to work quickly and in the shadows due to possible religious objections. Due to the methods the had to use a genetic flaw was introduced into the X chromosome. It was not planned.

limab

And becoming Mormon doesn't grant legal immunity to that, the main body of the Mormon faith fully discontinued the practice by 1890

Not entirely by choice, IIRC, it was made a condition of Utah becoming a state.

Not entirely by choice, IIRC, it was made a condition of Utah becoming a state.

Yes it was forced. But... They officially and definitively ended the practice in 1890, Utah didn't get statehood for another 6 years.

That said, as I posted earlier, my great-grandmother had her Polygamous Marriage annulled by the church, and she was already remarried in a monogamous marriage in 1888, 2 years before the Official Declaration was made that put a final nail in things.

The problem was disentangling the "die hards"/sects of Mormonism that did not abide by much earlier directives to end the practice which resulted in the Mormon Church being dis-incorporated by Congressional Act with SCotUS approval.

The "main body" had stopped the practice prior to 1890, although they retained the underlying doctrines. The "Main body" was subsequently punished for the behavior of people who identified as Mormon but had otherwise "gone Apostate" because they were defying the Church Leadership. As those non-compliant people were being used to "prove" the Church was not complying with the law of the land.

Which culminated in the Mormon Church having to renounce the doctrine, in addition to having already stopped the practice, in order to resume legally recognized and protected operations.

Much like the family in Mexico which was brutalized by a Mexican Cartel are even now getting press as being "Mormons" which is correct on technicality. They're part of one of those splinter-sects which continues to adhere to polygamy, and its why they were down there. There are over ten million Mormons who look to Salt Lake City for guidance. They do not practice polygamy.

There are quite likely only a few thousand Mormons out there that continue to practice polygamy, and they have nothing to do with the leadership in Salt Lake City. You're talking about a fraction of a fraction of a percent in the present day, and for them, they're walking on legal tightrope that has no legal recognition, and can actually subject them to legal prosecution if a DA is feeling plucky.

The Brown Family, from TLC's Sister Wives had a mixed result when they tried to legally challenge the Criminal Law on the books regarding Polygamy, courts ruled in their favor initially, but it was tossed out and overturned in the 10th Circuit Court because they found "it was unlikely they would prosecuted under that statute" given the guidance that the DA in the county they were in used for bringing a case to court. Even if they did meet the statutory criteria for prosecution.

Which I guess was a double edged sword for both sides that case. The Browns still have to worry about a DA bringing charges against them should they ever move back to Utah. But at the same time, it also means any DA who should try to do so had to realize there is a good chance that bringing charges could result in the law itself being struck down.