What legal protections exist for people entering into polyamorous relationships in the United States? Polyamorous relationships exist when at least one partner in a relationship has additional partners. Consider the following hypothetical arrangement: Person A is married to Person B. Person B has a romantic relationship with Person C. Person C is married to Person D. People C and D have other partners. (They are omitted in the rest of the question for brevity). Some states have laws against these kinds of relationships. As an example from the web, Kansas law says: Adultery. (a) Adultery is engaging in sexual intercourse or sodomy with a person who is not married to the offender if: (1) The offender is married; or (2) the offender is not married and knows that the other person involved in the act is married. (b) Adultery is a class C misdemeanor. (Source: KSA 21-5511) Under that law, it would seem that People B and C are likely committing adultery. Partners in this kind of relationship are subject to certain legal risks. For example, should the relationship between C and D sour, B may be accused of adultery. Is there any legal &quot;thing&quot; that can help people in polyamorous relationships protect themselves from legal risks arising from their relationships? For example, could they construct a contract or MOU which outlines their mutual expectations that they will have other partners?
I know of no laws at the federal or state level that explicitly extend their protection to poly relationships. However, any law that purports to outlaw a polyamorous relationship among consenting adults should be looked at very skeptically, as it would likely be found unconstitutional under Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003): The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. While that case dealt with homosexual relationships, it seems unlikely that the courts would conclude that heterosexual couples, throuples, etc., are entitled to less protection. Adultery laws exist in many jurisdictions, and many of them have survived constitutional challenges. But as far as I know, all those challenges relied on legal principles and precedents -- in particular, Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986) -- that Lawrence explicitly overruled. In this regard, I would not expect anyone in a polyamorous relationship to encourter meaningful legal jeopardy as a result of that relationship, assuming that the relationship(s) were otherwise legal and out in the open. If A is unaware of her spouse's relationship with C, for instance, that could cause problems in a divorce proceeding. I don't know of any legal options specifically designed for this sort of arrangement, but the more interconnected and interdependent these groups are, the more likely it becomes that some sort of written agreement would become worthwhile -- not as a response to legal danger arising from the polyamorous nature of the relationship, just to address the fact that someone is eventually going to fall short, potentially causing problems for the whole group. There are many lawyers who specialize in LGBT issues, and I'd imagine that some of them would be able to provide more detailed advice about how to deal with this type of situation.
united-states The treatment of how paternity is handled in cases of rape, from which child support and child custody determinations flow, varies by U.S. state in the United States as a result of an ongoing and recent wave of legislative innovation, prompted by cases in which convicted male rapists sought child custody in connection with children conceived in acts of rape for which they were convicted. A state by state summary of the applicable laws as of January 2020 (which oversimplifies the situation in which there are additional distinctions not noted, some of which are differences in wording that could be relevant to how these statutes apply in the OP case) can be found here. All of these laws are targeted at the case of a woman raped by a man who becomes pregnant, which is factually predominant, something that happens many thousands of times each year in the United States as a whole, and not at the case of a man who, in the course of being raped by a female, causes the female to become pregnant as a result. Cases of men being raped that are handled by the legal system, and do not involve statutory rape, predominantly involve sexual interaction that is not reproductive, i.e. something other than a man involuntarily having vaginal sex with a woman, often prison rape by a same sex inmate or rape with an object, and also, as in other cases of rape, often doesn't result in a conception of a child due to random chance. Likewise, many women convicted of rape are convicted as co-participants in a crime that involves physical penetration of a victim by a man or an object, rather than sexual intercourse with the woman convicted of the crime. So, the number of cases that could potentially be litigated with respect to this issue is much smaller. It is also worth noting that under U.S. criminal law, sexual intercourse procured by deception (other than deception regarding the person with whom one is having sex, for example, because of a blindfold or darkness, or deception regarding one's status as a medical practitioner making a medical examination, or as a law enforcement officer making a legally authorized cavity search) is not a crime and does not constitute rape. Also, generally speaking, having sex consensually in a manner not intended to lead to conception, which, in fact, does result in conception with consent to the sex giving rise to conception (e.g. where there is an agreement to &quot;pull out&quot; that isn't performed due to the acts of one or both parties involved), will almost never be prosecuted criminally as rape, whether or not a jury with perfect knowledge of the facts of the interaction could convict under the law of the minority of U.S. states where this might be possible. As @user6726 notes, the primary fact pattern related to the OP historically has involved instances of intercourse that are consensual in fact, but constitute statutory rape due to the age of the father which makes it impossible for him to legally consent, and in those cases, the default rule that the biological father of a child is recognized as the father for custody and child support purposes has been the predominant rule. But much of that case law predates modern rapist-paternity statutes and there is an equal protection argument that those statutes should have a parallel construction, although to the best of my knowledge, there are no reported appellate cases that have tested that issue. It remains an open issue of first impression in most, if not all, jurisdictions that have adopted rape-paternity statutes. In Minnesota, which had not adopted such a statute as of January 2020, being raped would not be a defense to a paternity, child custody, or child support claim.
Its worth actually reading through the law again - they're meant for different categories of drugs - and its worth looking up the relevant laws as a whole. You can't cherrypick which law you charge them under in this case. It depends on what the suspect has in posession, and if you have more serious charges, they're probably going to be preferred unless the prosecution decides to throw the entire library at the suspect and charge them with everything they can, or a larger subset. A quick search on the internet - which shouldn't be taken as legal advice, brings up this link. Category 1 drugs are addictive and seen as therapeutically useless - you shouldn't have any realistic reason to have quantities of it in your posession. Category 3 is drugs with therapeutic use - stuff like codine. You could get a prescription for that, but there's potential for abuse. They're aimed at different classes of drugs - and the confusion is over a misinterpretation of what the law is about. As an aside, this is why you need to usually read more than just a specific statute or law to get what its about.
Keep in mind that there are two kinds of legal consequences. One is criminal liability for violating a criminal statute, in a prosecution that must usually be brought by a government official. Merely causing emotional distress, in and of itself, is not generally a crime. For that matter, inducing someone to have sex with you through lies about anything other than the identity of the person having sex is usually not a crime. But inducing someone to disclose secrets or take actions that they otherwise would not have taken based upon a statement like this could be wire fraud, theft, extortion, or a variety of other crimes, depending upon what the person A was induced to do by the messages. Knowing what was sent, in isolation, doesn't tell you everything you need to know. While practicing medicine or other healing arts without a license is a crime or at least a civil offense, this wouldn't necessarily qualify, because person B is pretending to create someone treating person B, not pretending to practice medicine on person A. No one who wasn't in on the prank had medicine purportedly practiced upon them. But if the text were use to cause someone to act in reliance on a medical opinion (e.g., to get an employer to grant family leave to person A) then it might be illegal practice of medicine. The second is civil liability, in the form of a lawsuit for committing a civil wrong, called a &quot;tort&quot; or breaching a contract, or for other private individual initiated requests for remedies. The conduct in the question, conceivably gives rise to civil liability for intentional infliction of emotional distress, or civil fraud. But to know that it isn't enough to know what was said. One also has to know what happened on the other end of the communication. Did person A believe the text? Did person A suffer extreme emotional distress? Did person A part with money or information that couldn't have been obtained without a false statement of fact? Was person A's reputation harmed somehow?
Yes. In a civil case, there are two parties and the case is about finding out who has which obligations to whom. In a civil case, the plaintiff has to prove that they actually incurred damage through the actions of the defendant. A criminal case is the state vs. the defendant. The "wronged party" is the society as a whole, usually represented by the prosecutor. The victim, if there is one, just plays the role of yet another witness to find out if the defendant needs to be punished and how. There are also examples of crimes which are completely victimless but still punished by some societies. For example, in many places sexual intercourse between two consenting adult siblings is a crime (incest), even though there is no victim. Also, for some crimes it is even a crime to attempt to commit it. So one can be punished in a criminal court even though they didn't actually succeed in causing any damage to anyone. Example: I throw a rock at your car. When I hit, you can sue me in a civil court and force me to pay for the repairs. When I miss, I caused no damage to you, so there is nothing you could sue about. But what if I throw a rock at you and miss? That's attempted assault, maybe even attempted murder. When law enforcement finds out about it, I could be arrested, prosecuted and convicted to a prision sentence, even though you are perfectly fine.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is governed by Shari`ah law. See this work for an overview of Shari`ah as it relates to compensatory damages in personal injury cases. It is a principle under Ijma (a second-order source of Islamic law) that if one is insulted or emotionally injured by another party, you are entitled to be monetarily compensated. Sharia law in Saudi Arabia is not codified, so there exist differences among the four schools of Shari`ah regarding compensating a victim monetarily for emotional distress, which may alternatively be answered with physical punishment. Under Shari`ah, it is highly likely that moral harm would be found, since privacy is a fundamental right in Islam (see this source, with numerous citations). The standards for &quot;intrusion into seclusion&quot; under Shari`ah are stricter that they are under common law. However, other premises of the hypothetical are a problem under Shari`ah law (e.g. the whole dating thing).
If the purported husband (PH) has not attempted to enter the UK under false pretenses, and has not submitted documents containing false statements to the UK government, it is hard to see how he might be charged with a crime by the UK in connection with the invalid marriage. But since the PH is now said to have submitted an application for entry clearance based on the bigamous marriage, a marriage that it appears that he knew or should have known was invalid, he has submitted an official document based on a false statement. That is presumably an offense under UK law, and may well affect the PH's future immigration treatment. If the deceived wife has not knowingly made false statements to the UK government, it is hard to see how she would be charged in the UK. She would be wise to promptly inform the UK government that the marriage was invalid, to withdraw any statements or applications based on its validity, and to take legal steps to correct the record so that the marriage does not show as valid. This might be by annulment or some other procedure, probably depending on the law in the Bahamas where the purported marriage took place. (Under chapter 125, section 21(b) a prior marriage is valid grounds for an annulment or decree of nullity.) She might also want to notify the US authorities. The purported husband might have been guilty of bigamy in the Bahamas, depending on just how their law is written. Whether the authorities there will seek to extradite and prosecute him one cannot say.
No. The constitution protects the right of consenting adults to have sex in private &quot;without the intervention of the government.&quot; Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 578 (U.S. 2003).