Marital and family law in Kiravia

Marital and family law in Kiravia is rooted in Coscivian customary law, with influence from canon law, as well as Brehon law and sharia in certain regions. As with Kiravian social policy overall, marital and family laws are the domain of individual states, territories, and other federal subjects, and consequently vary across jurisdictions in numerous points of detail.

Family law has not developed as a field distinct from civil law in Kiravia. However, many jurisdictions have specialised Courts of Wards, and a few high-population jurisdictions such as County Dannen, Devahoma have specialised Courts of Marital Dissolution. Pribraltar, an associated state of the KF, does have a specialised lower court that approximates a Western family court, known as the Court of Divorce, Wardship, and Bastardy.

Marriage

Marriage is highly regarded in Coscivian culture, and the institution is believed by many anthropologists to be a defining feature of Coscivian civilisation. Kiravian marital laws reflect a cultural perspective of marriage as morally and spiritually edifying to those involved and society at large, and accords it a kind of intrinsic value. As such, marriage is treated as a very serious matter in the Kiravian legal system.

Polygamy is strictly illegal throughout the Kiravian Federacy, and contracting two or more simultaneous marriages is a criminal offence. Contracting multiple marriages across state lines (as in essentially all modern cases) is a federal crime and aggressively prosecuted. Although states generally do not police a couple's actual living arrangements or private sexual activities, de facto polygamous cohabitation is also formally illegal in most jurisdictions. The states and territories in Æonara are a a notable exception, due to the issue of breakaway Mormon sects practicing polygamy in some remote areas, which has resulted in several dozen prosecutions.

Same-sex marriage is not recognised anywhere in the Federacy. Gender-neutral civil unions and/or domestic partnerships are available in Kaviska, Fariva, Niyaska, Cascada, Argévia, Vôtaska, Asperidan, Serikorda, and the Capital District. However, in no state are the rights accorded to civil unions or domestic partnerships fully equivalent to those accorded to marriages.

As a rare example of uniformity across jurisdictions, the minimum marriageable age in all federal subjects and the federal demesne is 16. Some states set limits on age disparity between partners entering into a marriage. Kaviska, for example, forbids marriages between persons >3 years apart in age until the younger partner is at least 19, and >5 years apart in age until the younger partner is at least 25, absent certain extenuating circumstances. Manaskan Territory is quite strict in this respect, with a firm ban on marriage between partners >5 years apart in age, and between partners >2 years apart in age until age 21.

-Requirements and impediments, inc. age disparity -Matrimonial conditions and authorised celebrants Before the Republican Revolution, most of the Coscivian-majority states in Kiravia had some form of legal restriction on marriages between people of different ethnosocial communities (tuva). In South Kirav, there were further restrictions on marriages between people of different social rank, and some such marriages entailed forfeiture of certain privileges, such as inheritance rights. Most such laws were repealed or judicially invalidated in the years following the Republican Revolution, though they persisted in South Kirav for much longer. The Federal Consistory has ruled that Urom tribal polities may place restrictions on marriages between their members and non-Urom or members of other tribes for the purpose of tribal enrollment and benefit eligibility.

First-cousin marriage is prohibited in most coastal states of Great Kirav and Overseas Kiravia, but is legal in most states of the Great Kiravian interior, Æonara, Sydona, the Melian Isles, and Pribraltar.

Fusional Marriage

A minority of federal subjects follow the principle of "marital fusion", in which a married couple is regarded as a single, unified person for all or most purposes of civil law (but not criminal law), and any rights, permissions, obligations, and property conferred on one spouse is automatically extended to the other. In most such jurisdictions, a "marriage" is now treated as a legal entity in its own right (similar to a deceased person's estate) of which the husband and wife are co-administrators. Ilfenóra, Cascada, Metrea, Argévia, Venèra, Ixikéa-Qihuxia, Èusa, Central Æonara, the Starway Islands, Amóxav Territory, Verakośa, the Krasoa Islands, and Seváronsa are full marital fusion states, while Niyaska, Trinatria, Korlēdan, and the Sydona Islands recognise marital personhood in certain legal contexts.

Dissolution

Marriages legally terminate or expire only on the death of one or both partners, but can be dissolved by either annulment or divorce.

No federal subject has a mechanism for divorce by mutual consent, and all divorces require that a marital fault be proven in court. What acts and conditions qualify as marital faults vary by jurisdiction, but commonly include: -Any impediments -Adultery -Life imprisonment -[etc. etc. refer to forum post]

Marital faults can be either delinquent (ibvāsix) or conditional (télax). Delinquent faults are failures by a spouse to fulfill their marital duties, or violations of one spouse's marital or natural rights by the other. Common delinquent faults include (but are not limited to) abuse, adultery, neglect, economic nonprovision or negligence, abandonment, substance abuse, and long-term incarceration. Conditional faults are conditions (rather than actions or failures) that prevent the fulfillment of marital duties. These overlap with marital impediments, and can include impotence/infertility, ethnic or religious differences, serious mental illness, differences in sexual orientation, and (in Niyaska only) egregiously intolerable in-laws.

Some states allow for divorce on the grounds of ethnic or religious differences. Other faults particular to certain states include x,y,z.

The standard to which a marital fault must be proven to qualify for divorce varies by the fault in question and by jurisdiction. Some states insist more strongly on marriage counselling and attempts at reconciliation than others, especially if the couple has children. In some federal subjects, spouses mutually wishing to divorce can make use of certain "loophole faults", and/or expedite the proceedings by having one spouse decline to contest any accusations of fault (though fault must still formally be proven).

Marriages can also be dissolved by civil annulment. The criteria for granting an annulment are narrower than for a divorce, and annulments are typically reserved for facially invalid marriages, marriages to which an impediment existed at the time the union was concluded, and marriages with certain conditional faults. In a growing number of states marriages concluded when at least one spouse was between the minimum marriagable age (16) and another young age (usually 18 or 19, 20 in Fariva and Suderavia) can be annulled with reduced judicial scrutiny if the petition is entered within a certain time window (usually 12-24 months from the marriage date). Civil annulment is also used as a bureaucratic mechanism to dissolve marriages found to be criminally fraudulent or incorrectly documented.

Guardianship

Adoption as practiced in Western countries has never been recognised in the Coscivian legal tradition. A person's biological parents are the only people who can ever hold the status of that person's parents before the law. Other adults can, however, be granted guardianship of children as wards.

In all federal subjects, only married couples may apply to become guardians of an unrelated child. In most jurisdictions, if a married person inherits guardianship of a related child, both spouses are automatically accorded joint-guardianship, while in others joint-guardianship must be approved by a magistrate (though this process is usually pro forma). Civil unions and domestic partnerships are not equivalent to marriages for the purpose of guardianship.

For the sake of bureaucratic convenience, the Kiravian government extends de facto recognition to adoptions of foreign nationals by other foreign nationals certified in foreign countries, provided that none of the parties were residing or present in the Kiravian Federacy at the time of the adoption. Such adoptions are officially designated as áldalusbrix ēdākor ("legal-fictive parenthood") and the adoptees as áldalusbrix bosna ("legal-fictive offspring"). Federal law prohibits Kiravian nationals from travelling abroad or communicating with a foreign government for the purpose of adopting an unrelated child. However, Kiravian nationals may adopt (or otherwise become guardians of) related foreign-national children under the laws of another country, and are granted guardianship of any such children under Kiravian law.

Surrogacy is not recognised in Kiravian law, and the practice is generally illegal. Different jurisdictions have taken different approaches to establishing parental rights over children born through surrogacy illegally or abroad.