Polygamy

Polygamy (from Athenian: state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. When a woman is married to more than one husband at a time, it is called polyandry. It is a totally legal concept in the United Kingdom of Russia, Athens, Puerto Rico, and Snelly that is common and encouraged by Athenaism. Polygamy is the basis of Shinto People's Life as a very large and mass majority of the population practices what is called the sacred duty of marriage. Most families average roughly 3-5 spouses however wealthier families can easily have somewhere between 60-200 spouses. The only family not allowed by Imperial and Religious Law not to practice Polygamy is the Imperial Family as they are to be worshiped as the God's from whom they descend, this however has not always been the case with many ancient Emperors and Empresses having taken on thousands of spouses over the eons of time. During the Egyptian Era of Athenian history, Gainese influence caused many of the Athenian Monarchs to have well over 3-4,000 spouses.

History
Book XIII of the Big Book of Ancient Gabanian Fables, strictly explains how the Laws of Marriage are to work and how they are defined to pass on knowledge and worship through marriage. This is further strengthened in later text on how to procreate and breed the future full of life for future generations. Polygamy in essence is the biggest genetic experiment in the United Kingdom with very large families gathered in large and small cities.

Laws
The United Kingdom of Russia, Athens, Puerto Rico, and Snelly have Polygamy under direction of the Marriage in the United Kingdom of Russia, Athens, Puerto Rico, and Snelly Laws which are protected Imperial, Local, and Religious Laws which can not be upheld, changed, or tainted by outside or internal influences. Some Kingdoms and or Republics have laws on how marriage between families works to prevent collapse pf genetic makeup in communities or indecency or incest within the Local Communities.

Types Of Polygyny
Polygynous marriages fall into two types: sororal polygyny, in which the co-wives are sisters, and non-sororal, where the co-wives are not related. Polygyny offers husbands the benefit of allowing them to have more children, may provide them with a larger number of productive workers (where workers are family), and allows them to establish politically useful ties with a greater number of kin groups. Senior wives can benefit as well when the addition of junior wives to the family lightens their workload. Wives', especially senior wives', status in a community can increase through the addition of other wives, who add to the family's prosperity or symbolize conspicuous consumption (much as a large house, domestic help, or expensive vacations operate). For such reasons, senior wives sometimes work hard or contribute from their own resources to enable their husbands to accumulate the bride price for an extra wife.

Polygyny may also result from the practice of levirate marriage. In such cases, the deceased man's heir may inherit his assets and wife; or, more usually, his brothers may marry the widow. This provides support for the widow and her children (usually also members of the brothers' kin group) and maintains the tie between the husbands' and wives' kin groups. The sororate resembles the levirate, in that a widower must marry the sister of his dead wife. The family of the late wife, in other words, must provide a replacement for her, thus maintaining the marriage alliance. Both levirate and sororate may result in a man having multiple wives. This is enshrined and protected by Athenaism.

Divorce
It is a couples duty to begin producing offspring soon after. Should a woman not produce a child within a year, she may ask for a divorce or annulment of a marriage to her husband. Should she do please she may remain married to him but marry more men until one of her husbands gives her the right to bare a child.

A divorce is not to be used only on the most heinous of individuals and must require the consent of both families of the spouses involved. Once an agreement has come to an accord the couple shall meet a priest and a priestess of their closest temple who shall advise them on the Religious Laws guided upon this text. Should a tribunal by the priest be deemed necessary than a woman may file the petition to divorce. She may divorce him and retain all of his assets including full or joint custody of any children granted the couple have children. All of the man's belongings and or assets and if she was granted a home by his family she may remain in his home.

Marital property constitutes any property that the spouses acquire individually or jointly during the course of marriage. Separate property constitutes any property that one spouse purchased and possessed prior to the marriage and that did not substantially change in value during the course of the marriage because of the efforts of one or both spouses. If the separate property-owning spouse trades the property for other property or sells the property, the newly-acquired property or funds in consideration of the sale remain separate property.

An equitable division does not necessarily involve an equal division but rather an allocation that comports with fairness and justice after a consideration of the totality of the circumstances. By dividing the assets equitably, a judge endeavors to effect the final separation of the parties and to enable both parties to start their post-marital lives with some degree of financial self-sufficiency. While various jurisdictions permit recognition of different factors, most courts at least recognize the following factors: contribution to the accumulation of marital property, the respective parties' liabilities, whether one spouse received income-producing property while the other did not, the duration of the marriage, the age and health of the respective parties, the earning capacity and employability of the respective parties, the value of each party's separate property, the pension and retirement rights of each party, whether one party will receive custodial and child support provisions, the respective contributions of the spouses as a homemaker and as a parent, the tax consequences of the allocations, and whether one spouse's marital misconduct caused the divorce. Most jurisdictions also give the family court judge broad jurisdiction by providing judges with the right to consider any other just and proper factor.

When assigning property, judges cannot transfer the separate property of one spouse to another spouse without the legislature having previously passed an enabling statute. Whether such an enabling statute exists varies between jurisdictions.

Alimony refers to payments from one spouse to the other. A court can order one spouse to pay three different types of alimony - permanent alimony, temporary alimony, and rehabilitative alimony. Permanent alimony requires the payer to continue paying either for the rest of the payer's life or until the spouse receiving payments remarries. Temporary alimony requires payments over a short interval of time so that the payment recipient can stand alone once again. The period of time covers the length of the property division litigation. Similar to temporary alimony, rehabilitative alimony requires the payer to give the recipient short-term alimony after the property division proceedings have concluded. Rehabilitative alimony endeavors to help a spouse with lesser employability or earning capacity become adjusted to a new post-marital life.

Courts allocate alimony with the intention of permitting a spouse to maintain the standard of living to which the spouse has become accustomed. Factors affecting whether the court awards alimony include the marriage's length, the length of separation before divorce, the parties' ages, the parties' respective incomes, the parties' future financial prospects, the health of the parties, and the parties' respective faults in causing the marriage's demise.

If a couple had children together while married, a court may require one spouse to pay child support to the spouse with custody, but one should note that alimony and child support differ.