@LovesDogs, please read the following sentence without assigning any sarcasm or irony into what it says, because I'm entirely sincere: I love that you're such a deep thinker; you ask some good questions, and I mean that even when I disagree with some of the presuppositions behind them. Thank you for asking them. Not only does it indicate that you're seriously contemplating being part of a plural family, but you are likely voicing concerns many others are too timid to acknowledge having.
Indeed it does, and if it didn't I wouldn't hold the current U.S. record for the longest 4th marriage.
On its face, what you've stated is true, but it's so nuanced it needs to be unpacked a bit:
- What isn't mentioned is relevant: the manner in which divorce laws have historically been interpreted by our legal court system is such that significantly greater protection is provided for wives than for husbands. As @steve indicated,
but it is what it is. First wives have a greater amount of power over their husbands in this regard than their husbands have over them.- It is incorrect, though, to assume that additional wives would have no protection, because the courts have also long and rather consistently established that any other form of paramour also has financial leverage in the courts subsequent to the break-up of a relationship. (That's why the word 'palimony' exists.)
- Thus, we're not even really talking about 'protection,' per se, but (a) power, and (b) guarantees of after-the-fact financial compensation.
- Also, no matter what historically was formerly the case, in these modern times divorces are initiated by women 75% of the time; I've noted since being involved in this organization that the stories that are ballyhooed the most are the ones about women being cast aside as unworthy second wives, but my informal tally informs me that it's still more common for women to vamoose than for men to sweep them out the door.
- We've had many discussions about legal marriage in these forum threads, and the growing consensus seems to be that, in retrospect, most men and women would have entirely avoided the state marriage license thing if they had it to do over again. (And I personally can guarantee you from my vast personal and professional experience with divorces is that, while in very rare cases some particular individual comes out as a winner, in the vast majority of cases everyone or nearly everyone loses as a result of a divorce; usually there are no financial winners, the kids lose, and the women are typically the biggest losers, most especially when they initiate the divorces, because they tend to make the mistaken calculation that they can monkeybranch upward into a higher-status marriage but instead spend an average of the next 8 years without a partner.
As a stay-at-home Dad, I have great empathy for this concern. I have two responses: the first quotes Bar Potato:
Our legal system centers around contracts and is designed to provide enforcement mechanisms for contracts; families can get very creative about designing legal frameworks for how individuals will be treated in the event of dissolution, death, illness, injury, fraud, etc. The only stipulation is that everything in the contract has to be in accordance with legislated law. It's actually not at all illegal to cohabit with more than one woman; what's against the law is having more than one marriage license simultaneously in effect. There is no reason why the sexual relationships of the people involved have to be mentioned.
And your safeguard in this regard is to make part of the contract that it can't be amended unless every party agrees to any given change. Personally, I'd never sign a personal contract with someone that they were free to change but I was not.
On the other hand, though, I think some of this is a matter of personal motivation, so it's worthwhile for any woman considering getting into a situation like this to be foundationally honest with herself about what her motivations are. What we're talking about is becoming part of a family in a way that one is also an intimate partner with the head of the household. Be honest with yourself, and then be honest with your potential husband about what all of your motivations are -- and be sure to emphasize their actual interrelated hierarchical priority levels. If your primary motivation is to ensure that, should things go south, you will leave the relationship in a better financial position than you entered into it, then be up front about that. Any given individual will likely have money concerns, concerns about chores and other expectations, concerns about employment, concerns about power related to spending money, concerns about how much free time one is going to have, concerns about how much attention one will get from the husband, concerns about the potential sister-wife relationships, concerns about sex (how often, with whom, where, etc.), concerns about housing arrangements, concerns about who gets to use the kitchen and when, concerns about discipline of pre-existing or subsequently-born children, concerns about education, and concerns about health care. Know what your expectations are -- and articulate them ahead of time.
For most of us in this organization, the primary place we're coming from is wanting to actualize scriptural dictates related to plural marriage, and first and foremost among them is the fact that the purpose of polygyny is to ensure that women who would otherwise be leftovers (widows, orphans, the disabled, the less attractive, and even the divorced) receive the male covering all women desperately need (even those who pretend they don't need it, because modern entitlement society has predominantly-male-provided safety nets to protect them from the disasters their lives would otherwise be -- as the former director of a social services agency for psychiatrically-disabled homeless people, I can guarantee you there is
nothing more heart-wrenching than to watch a mentally-ill homeless women go through the motions of her day). The subset of affluent women with great financial means and generalized resourcefulness who end up being second or third wives is likely smaller than the worldwide population of transgendered quadriplegic lesbian leprechauns, which is to say that women who dump assets into a polygynous marriage and then go on to work outside the home to provide the vast amount of family financial resources is rare enough to justify the fact that we generally ignore brainstorming what to do in such a situation. In other words, the majority of the time second and third wives are likely to enter a situation much more stable than they left, and if they leave they are likely to have contributed less than they received while they were in place.
Whoever suggested life insurance was probably closer to being on the mark.
So, then, because I take you at your word, I have some very simply advice: as your own personal insurance policy,
before you agree to be part of a pre-existing family, you should acquire all the savings and other investments you will want to be in place in the event that you exit that family. Make it clear to whomever you interview as a potential spouse that you are going to have an attorney or an accountant keep those assets in a trust that you won't access while you're married, neither for yourself or for the good of anyone in the family you're joining. That way you have a life raft that will keep you from thinking that you're staying in the marriage only because you'd be leaving destitute.
Now, on the other hand, unless you're working on marrying a complete chump who expects the family he's already built to provide you with your covering and protection but you get to come in without any skin in the game, you should be prepared for your potential spouse to ask you if you're prepared to start off in an entry-level position within the family, perhaps, for example, gradually gaining access to full privileges within the already-established family structure (its home; its activities; its vacations; its division of space within its buildings; etc.) as you gradually exit what could be labeled a long-term probationary period.
And, yes, I am being somewhat facetious about writing that -- but not entirely. It's only human nature to focus on the what-am-I-going-to-get-out-of-this-arrangement end of things, but I will strongly suggest that polygyny is not only not for everyone; it's not for hardly
anyone and couldn't be just based on the numbers. In order to have the heart for the variety of family structures that work within polygyny, one has to have a heart that spends
more time ensuring that everyone else isn't getting shafted than one spends worrying about whether one will get the short end of the stick.
There's actually a lot, but, yes, it's true that most of it is indirectly addressed. However, you can start with Exodus 21:10, and there's a whole lot more packed in that one verse than it gets credit for: "
If he is taking another for himself
, he shall not diminish her meat, her covering and her co
habitation." [CVOT] Food, housing, protection, camaraderie, sexual satisfaction, but nowhere there or elsewhere does it imply either (a) that nothing will be expected of her, or (b) that the pre-nup will include a generous golden parachute (although it
is the case that Torah goes to great lengths to protect women from being mistreated by the divorce process).
And you can add to the above anything else that Scripture requires men to do in regard to the treatment of their wives. Exodus 21:10 extends anything expected for the first wife to be expected for second, third, fourth or even 700th wives.
