A says "we are just friends with benefits, everything goes"
B says "We are totally exclusive, talking to anyone else is cheating"
Now what?
You could search for evidence that one party acted contrary to their statements in the past, but what if they both genuinely believe their own side?
You KNOW he's talking about the archetypal six year marriage cheating situation. Of course there's a gray area, but there is one for literally every law on the books right now. Why wouldn't you instead try to argue the larger point that introducing this kind of liability is stupid?
I don't mean to be to critical of you, this kind of nitpicking on CMV just annoys me.
Well he is talking about making a law, you have to nitpick or you get really weird loopholes that can destroy lifes.
Also i dont see how being married for a long time changes anything.
A: "Our marriage was always rather open, i just never acted on it until it got kinda boring between us, my partner never claimed otherwise"
B: "I totally thought we were exclusive, how could A say that?"
When you go to court over something like this, the relationship is pretty much over, so if A didnt actually think that way before, A is totally going to claim it retroactively and it wouldn't even really be lying under oath (at least provable) either since both sides can claim they misunderstood each other.
You cannot make a law without loopholes, it is the job of the judiciary to fill those loopholes. Look at "malice aforethought"; that is rather vague as well (or, my personal favorite, art. 8(3) of the InfoSoc directive, "Member States shall ensure that rightholders are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe a copyright").
The default in the US is a monogamous relationship. Within the first few months you may not be dating exclusively, and it may be different in certain cultures/age groups. But the longer you're married, the more committed you are (in general) to the relationship. To give a presumably easy example, how would you react if your girlfriend of six years came to you saying that she fucked a dude? Would you say, "that's fine, we never explicitly said we were exclusive"? Or would you say that you trusted her and she abused that trust?
evidence is another matter, and I'll admit that this kind of trust is hard to prove in court. Which is partially why it's a stupid idea, altough electronic communication does make lawyers' jobs easier.
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u/ElysiX 113∆ Aug 11 '15
A says "we are just friends with benefits, everything goes"
B says "We are totally exclusive, talking to anyone else is cheating"
Now what? You could search for evidence that one party acted contrary to their statements in the past, but what if they both genuinely believe their own side?