Difference between revisions of "Polyamorous Relationships"

}}''Polyamorous relationships'' are relationships involving more than two adults; someone who identifies as ''polyamorous'' is or prefers to be in a relationship with more than one other person at a time. Polyamorous relationships are tremendously diverse. They may include adults who are married to each other and adults who have had children together. The people in a polyamorous relationship may or may not identify as a "family," they may or may not live together, and they may or may not own property together. Not only are polyamorous relationships varied and diverse, they can be ''complicated''.

This section provides an introduction to polyamorous relationships and how polyamorous relationships work in the context of family law. Because each province and territory has its own laws about who is entitled to parent children, ask for child support, ask for spousal support, and ask to divide property, the information in this page only applies to people who live in British Columbia. If you live outside of British Columbia and are entering or leaving a polyamorous relationship, you ''must'' speak to a family law lawyer in your area for accurate information about how family law may impact you and your relationship.

The social expectations associated with marriage are rather predictable. Although some people have open marriages, where each spouse is free to have relationships with other people, most of the time — the vast majority of the time — marriages are monogamous. This expectation is so common that many married couples don't even talk about it. It's ''assumed'' that they'll be faithful to each other. We also expect that they'll provide emotional support for each other — in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health — and work together as true partners, each making sacrifices for the benefit of the whole.

While the people involved in a polyamorous relationship may share these expectations of their partners, they may not. Polyamorous relationships vary in terms of participants' expectations of mutual commitment, interdependence, and sexual and emotional fidelity. A polyamorous individual may be simultaneously involved in two or more romantic relationships, without those people being in a relationship with each other, or significant, committed relationships may exist among everyone involved. An individual may be involved in a core relationship that is committed and enduring, while one or more members of that core relationship are involved in peripheral sexual relationships with others. Or, an individual may be involved in a number of concurrent relationships that are more sexual than romantic in nature and involve a lesser sense of interdependence. It's safe to say that no two polyamorous relationships are exactly alike.

Polyamorous relationships have likely existed from the dawn of human history. Even though pair relationships have dominated Western culture since the days of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, polygamous marriages are permitted by law and remain important parts of the cultural fabric in many countries — particularly in western Africa and in nations governed by sharia law — and are socially accepted but neither legalized nor criminalized in others. Polyamorous relationships, the unmarried cousin of polygamous relationships, are growing in popularity in North America and in Europe, and it appears that more Canadians identify as polyamorous today than ever before.

That being said, the exact number of Canadians who consider themselves to be polyamorous or are engaged in polyamorous relationships is unknown; Statistics Canada doesn't track polyamorous relationships in its population surveys. The limited information available from the United States suggests that in 2009, one in 614 Americans lived in openly polyamorous relationships while in 2010, one in 500 Americans identified as polyamorous. Research conducted by the [https://prism.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/handle/1880/107212/Perceptions_of_Polyamory_-_Dec_2017.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family] in 2016 found that 82.4% of the 547 respondents to a national survey agreed that the number of people who identify as polyamorous in Canada is increasing, and that 80.9% agreed that the number of people involved in polyamorous relationships is increasing.

Family law is relevant to people in polyamorous relationships just as it's relevant to people in other kinds of family relationship. If there are children, parenting and child support may be an issue. If an adult is dependent on others, spousal support may be an issue. If property has been purchased or debt incurred, the identification of property rights may be an issue. However, you'll remember the discussion earlier in this chapter about how the rights and responsibilities family law talks about depend on how people fit into terms like ''spouse'', ''common-law partner'', ''parent'', ''guardian'' and ''child''. That's where things get difficult for people in polyamorous relationships. British Columbia's ''[[Family Law Act]]'', the federal  ''[[Divorce Act]]'', and the family law legislation of the other provinces and territories are all written on the assumption that adult relationships only come in pairs, and figuring out how the square peg of polyamorous relationships fits into the round hole of pair relationships can be tricky.

Bigamy means being married to more than one person at the same time, and is an offence under section 290 of the ''[http://canlii.ca/t/7vf2 Criminal Code]''. Polygamy means being married to more than two other people at the same time, and is a criminal offence under section 293 of the ''Code''. (''Polyandry'', incidentally, means a marriage involving more than one man, while ''polygyny'' means a marriage involving more than one woman. The relationships you see on television in shows like ''Big Love'' and ''Sister Wives'' are polygynous marriages.)

The other distinguishing characteristic of polyamorous relationships is that while polygamous marriages tend to be motivated by religious beliefs and revolve around men — ''Sister Wives'' is a very good example of these attitudes, and in fact polygamy was originally criminalized as a response to the spread of the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to which Kody Brown and his family are adherents — polyamorous relationships tend to be motivated by a belief in the importance of freedom of choice, equality among the members of a relationship, and honesty.

We know that "marriage" is out because of the definition in the ''Civil Marriage Act'', but you'll see that the definition of unmarried spouse in section 3(1)(b) doesn't have a number limit attached to it. In Alberta, on the other hand, section 3(1) of the ''Adult Interdependent Relationships Act'' says that an adult interdependent partner includes someone who has lived with someone else in a ''relationship of interdependence''. Section 1(1) of that act offers a definition of that unusual term and says this:

And there's that number limit again, "2 persons." But that's missing from the British Columbia definition of "spouse" in section 3(1)(b) of the ''Family Law Act''. To "live with another person in a marriage-like relationship" doesn't mean to live with ''just one other person''. The British Columbia definition means that a person can be in a spousal relationship with one person while being in a spousal relationship with someone else and being in a spousal relationship with someone else.

The definition of "parent" is still restricted. The parents of a child conceived by natural reproduction are limited to the birth mother and the biological father under section 26 of the ''Family Law Act''. Although, for a child conceived by assisted reproduction, the people who sign an assisted reproduction agreement can agree that the child's parents will include:

for a total of six potential parents who are "parents" for all purposes of the law of British Columbia. These limits are important, as it is a child's ''parents'' who are presumed, in most cases, to be the child's ''guardians'', and it is only ''guardians'' who have parenting responsibilities and parenting time with a child.

However, there's a workaround. While parents cannot make an agreement appointing someone who isn't a parent as a guardian of their child, the court can make orders appointing other people as a child's guardian under section 51 of the ''Family Law Act'', and there are no limits on the number of people who can be appointed as the guardians of a child.

Not much.