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Difference between revisions of "Polyamorous Relationships"
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→Managing negotiations with lawyers
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===Managing negotiations with lawyers=== | ===Managing negotiations with lawyers=== | ||
When people in a pair relationship want to sign a | When people in a pair relationship want to sign a cohabitation agreement or a marriage agreement, one of them will usually hire a lawyer to write it up. The draft agreement goes to the other person, who reviews it with their lawyer and gets some advice about whether it's a good agreement or a bad agreement. Quite often the second lawyer has a number of changes to make, and proposes these to the drafting lawyer. After a bit of back-and-forthing, a final draft is ready to sign. Most family law agreements that are written by lawyers include "certificates of independent legal advice." These get signed by the lawyers and the parties, and indicate that each person saw a lawyer about the agreement, and that the lawyer explained to them how the agreement affects their rights and obligations as well as the alternatives to signing an agreement. | ||
The [[Family Law Agreements]] chapter talks about this process in a lot more detail, but this is bare bones of it. No matter whose lawyer drafts the agreement, the other person always has the chance to comment and make changes to the agreement, and both people get legal advice about the meaning and impact of the agreement. | |||
In polyamorous relationships, things are a little more complicated. This is mainly because there are more than two lawyers involved, and each of the lawyers has an obligation to discuss a proposed cohabitation agreement with their clients and suggest changes that make the agreement more fair... or at least more fair from their client's perspective. That's an awful lot of cooks in the kitchen to mess things up, especially when you consider how much more complicated cohabitation agreements for people in polyamorous relationships are compared to cohabitation agreements for people in pair relationships. | |||
Sometimes the best solution is to hire a lawyer whose only job is to take care of the writing part, and doesn't represent any of the parties. This makes the drafting lawyer a lot more neutral. Their job is to talk with the people entering the relationship about the sort of things the agreement can talk about and the things it can't, and then write out the agreement that the people entering the relationship want. | |||
The draft agreement then goes to the lawyers for each of the people entering the relationship. Each lawyer talks to their client about the law, how the proposed agreement would affect their rights and responsibilities, and whether the agreement is fair or not. Based on that discussion, each lawyer then talks to the drafting lawyer about the changed they think are needed to better protect the interests of their client, make the agreement more understandable or make the agreement easier to use. The drafting lawyer then takes everyone's comments and tries to edit the agreement to reflect the changes people want, and letting everyone know if there are any comments that are contradictory. The revised agreement then goes back to each lawyer-client pair for more legal advice and possibly more changes. Those changes go back to the drafting lawyer for further revisions, which hopefully results in a final agreement that everyone is as happy with as possible. | |||
==Resources and links== | ==Resources and links== | ||