This was a question asked and answered at Quora. I'm crossposting it here.
"Will it work if we changed the name of my older sister in order to be able to get married legally?"
Getting a government marriage license and being in a valid legal marriage are two different things*, although there is often a lot of overlap.
Sweden and Brazil will LEGALLY marry HALF siblings under certain circumstances. I’m not aware of a government that will knowingly issue marriage paperwork to full siblings. In some places, the basis on which such paperwork is issued is birth certificates. If your birth certificate and her birth certificate indicate you share one or both parents, the marriage would be denied on those grounds.
Even if you could manage to get government paperwork issued despite the laws, this would be considered another crime if you were discovered by authorities to be in an invalid (according to them) marriage, and the marriage would be legally nullified.
Some of us are seeking to change laws so that there will be full marriage equality. Until then, if you want to marry your sister you are probably best off:
- Having a private ceremony. Only have people there you trust with your life (unless none of them know you are siblings, but even then, you run the risk of having pictures/video circulated to someone who DOES know). There are ordained clergy members who will perform a ceremony.
- Make up your own marriage certificate.
- Consider each other spouses and treat each other that way (much easier to do if you’re living where people don’t know of your relation).
- Consult a family law/estate planning attorney who can arrange for you to be as close to legally married as possible. DO NOT tell the attorney you are lovers. Rather, tell the attorney you want to be legally responsible for each other over and above any other relatives. You want joint accounts, you want power of attorney/medical power of attorney, you want to be reciprocal beneficiaries, inheritance between the two of you, etc.
Consider this. You haven’t witnessed the wedding of every married person you know. And even if you were at their wedding, you probably never saw any legal paperwork regarding them marrying. There are countless people in your life you accept as married, solely on the basis that they have introduced themselves/each other that way, or have behaved as spouses. You can live as a married couple on a social level, as well. Friend and neighbors aren’t going to ask for your marriage paperwork. This is especially so if you’re living where people don’t know you as siblings. Just be careful not to state in any legal paperwork that you’re legally married, because if they need to verify that, it can be a problem.
*In some places, people can be considered legally married if they have lived together as partners long enough and aren’t legally married to anyone else, despite never having filed any marriage paperwork. However, this isn’t yet applied to siblings, unfortunately.
Sharing my personal experience. I am from India and here several forms of marriage are present. Many married couple usually older ones and people from rural areas do not have a marriage certificate as previously the social weddings and ceremonies witnessed by family, relatives and friends are considered more acceptable and there were no need to have a certificate in paper forms. But in past 2-3 decades Govt. has encouraged couples to get their certificate as soon as they can. It ensures smooth processing of many govt services. Also gives a legal grounds in cases of separation (divorce) or death of one of the spouses. Provides more security. It has been seen in many marriage registrar's office that even 70+ years old couples married for more than half a century has visited the offices to get the documents done.
ReplyDeleteBut still it is not the only form. Several people stay together in a live in relationship without never getting married socially or legally. Some never do their paperwork even being socially married for long times.
In Hindu religion, the compatibility of two person's marriage decided by their gotras among many other factors. Gotras are a form of ancient paternal lineage. People from same gotras and two non-compatible gotras can not marry since that is considered incest. A son gets the same gotra as his father. Daughter gets same gotra as long as she is unmarried and after that she takes the gotra of her husband. But if her husband dies she takes the gotra of her father to be remarried. So a brother can not marry even her widow sister.
Though in many ancient mythology and texts, there are examples of brother sister marriages. Some in form of accidents, some is depicted as sin and how 'God's rage' come down upon who has done the sin. But also in some stories it has been depicted as pure form of love. I forgot the exact name but one of the towns is said to formed and named after a brother-sister couple who got married by God and asked to repopulate the place.
So they may not get the legal validation of their marriage but they certainly can some form of marriage if they want to as you have mentioned.
For me, I married my mother in a temple without any witness except the priest. We did not tell even the priest about our nature of relation.
After my father died, mom took her father's gotra and I had my father gotra. So since my parents were compatible, so were we. And that's how we were able to get permission from the priest to conduct the ceremony for us. We can not have any legal document of this marriage since in this digital world our govt ids would recognise as mother son. But we consider ourselves as married couple.