[zengargoyle]

I married my best friend of several years so she could get financial aid. Her financial aid counselor told her about the lengthy emancipation legal process or marriage. She came over one night with a "I have a huge favor to ask of you" and about a week later we were married.

[IggleSniggle]

My spouse and I got married "early" in the court system for a similar reason, in order to qualify for in-state tuition. However, we then had a proper wedding in front of our family and community a few months later, so I'm not sure it would really matter to the policy makers. Definitely helped drive home for us, though: there are three different marriages in a marriage:

There is a legal contract, that is important to people you have never met and will never meet, and, if things are going right, is never at all relevant to your actual marriage in any way except for how it lets you navigate government policy.

There is a social contract, that is important to everyone who acknowledges you as a couple (and also people who have never business seeing you this way).

And there is your actual relationship, which may be enhanced or degraded by the previous two elements, but is somewhat oblique to both.

[nyolfen]

did you stay married?

[zengargoyle]

Technically, yes for about seven years. We were introduced by a mutual friend because we were both staying on campus over the Christmas holiday. We hooked up on Christmas Eve and dropped some acid and had a fun few days. We were both the oddly precocious types who graduated high school at 16/17. We were both sorta slutty. We just became best of friends for the next few years (we both went our own separate ways romantically, we would eventually even go out and hook up with each others roommates...) We went out and got tattoos together on her 18th birthday. It was a couple of years later that we got married (I like to pontificate that we got married by the justice of the peace in the Blade Runner building. It was justice of the peace and somewhere in an old downtown LA building, no frills). She had her mothers or grandmothers ring or such, mine was a Peace symbol ring from a gumball machine with the Peace symbol torn off.... It turned my finger green unless coated with clear nail polish. About six months later I left university and moved halfway across the country. It was always interesting to eventually tell girlfriends and such that "by the way, technically I'm married". Around seven years later I ran into another mutual friend who told me that she had been looking for me to sign papers and such and couldn't find me. We did meet up again a few years later and nothing came up, she finally settled down and got really married. I assume she got a rubber stamp divorce for abandonment or even non-consummation (almost, but we were both so "too drunk to fuck" on Extacy that we gave up and just went back to the party). She's still a fond memory of a bestest friend for years, we could like read each other's minds, almost too dangerous to be serious.

[actionfromafar]

I would watch this movie! Would probably be better than “the Pursuit of happiness”

[midasuni]

I’m surprised it’s not counted as fraud

[afthonos]

The right way to think of marriage for government purposes is a contract. If someone has entered in this contract, they get certain benefits. If the benefits are properly designed, they are valid only for the duration of the contract. As long as both people were abiding by the terms of the contract, it’s not fraud.

[IggleSniggle]

It beat the fraud of getting married for the sole purpose of getting into someone's pants!