"A flat fine. Paid to the mother, with her choice to accept the money or the man's proposal, if he chooses to offer it. If he cannot pay, indenture him, and the mother receives the money paid by the man who buys his contract. If he can, the man's life is not overly disturbed, but the woman is compensated. I doubt this passes the floor, but I would vote for it, with certain details."

- what???

"I think he was a wizard student? I assume that specific situation isn't going to really come up anymore but I don't think that plan would work well for men who don't have the money and do have some other reason where they're already committed to something else in a way where you can't easily say 'go be indentured instead.'"

Shrug. "A wizard student is employed by the government, and can be very easily obliged to work for longer, in addition to the work needed to pay off his existing debts. The more difficult case is a man who is already married and supporting other children. I don't see a comfortable solution that lowers the number of abandoned children on five moments of thought."

"Of course, this system gives women more reason to bear bastards, especially if not coupled with any prohibition on smothering the children when they exist. And the whole thing is effectively offering a woman the option between payment or mere forgiveness with no compensation, unless and until the government regains an opinion on what it means to marry someone in the first place, or any limits on divorce immediately afterward."

"Lashes with a simple whip*, at the request of the mother? If she is appeased by gifts, she can decline to request it, and we need not set a specific fine. Shame and a little pain are good encouragements toward reformation, and discouragements from erring in the first place."

This favors noblemen who have the strength of adventurers, but he didn't specify the number of lashes and can fix that if he's called on it.

*i.e. not a barbed whip or cat-o-tails that can maim if it hits right/wrong

"That system seems very... personally adversarial."

"...I think the two of you might be solving different problems?" Or the evil titled Hellspawn is messing things up on purpose, that's always a possibility. "Lashing the father is a good solution if you're trying to get him back for hurting the mother, and having him marry her or pay her isn't, since marrying her isn't really a punishment necessarily and the money would hurt him way less if he's rich. But it's a bad solution if you're just trying to figure out what to do for the child, which I think is what Delegate Napaciza is getting at?"

"A fine does both. It provides very little reason for the nobility to change their ways, but you will not, realistically, convince the nobles to give up having mistresses. Requiring that they provide some compensation to all the women who bear their children is a more plausible improvement. But for men of ordinary means, a fine is painful - more painful than being whipped, in many respects - and both encourages responsibility and compensates the mother and child."

"Ideally, we would find a way to discourage irresponsibility, encourage actual fatherhood, and provide something for children born under circumstances where the father's further involvement would only make things worse. But these may cut in different directions."

"You could make it a - tax benefit of some kind, being married."

"I think — it kind of sounds like you're assuming marriage is usually always good? And I don't really think that's true."

"It's possible to do any good thing wrong. But even a bad marriage is better than kids starving."

Victòria is not at all sure that this is true. "I think bad marriages are usually worse for the woman than the man." 

"I'd believe it. So? A toddler can't go out and get himself a job."

"—well, if a man's the type to beat his wife and children senseless for disrespecting him, I don't think they're better off for having him there."

"Would you marry a man like that for a tax benefit?"

"...not on purpose? I think I'm maybe losing track of all the different ideas people have suggested."

"Then we'd need divorce, which as my wife has insisted to me-" She nods firmly from her seat taking notes. "-we certainly need in some form anyway."

"Bad marriages are very bad, and wives need some way of escaping them," she says, "Osirion is good for the children in every way we could ask for but that, and I am not at all sure it is worth it even if we can't do better."

Soler clicks his tongue. "It's normal to have some arguments, spots where it's not smooth. And I know that's not what you mean, but some young lady who's been married only the once, does she know that's not what you mean? Does she know whether she's got a case of something you work through and not something you drop everything and damn the consequences?"

"I trust this committee to develop a reasonable notion. One of the versions of that right suggested was 'if a priest hears the dispute and judges it allowed'. I have heard Erastil has chosen many men this year, and that Pharasma has many midwives as well."

"That'd be all right by me. So long as she can convince someone who knows it'd be rotten to get it wrong."

"I don't think women should have to go to a priest about it. If a woman is married to a man like that, and there's some delay before she can talk to one — over on Rights we were talking about how a lot of villages don't have a full-time priest right now — then she'd be stuck with a man who's a danger to her. If things are so bad that she'd rather divorce him, even though it'll mean getting by without his income, I think she should be allowed to. If a man wants to just abandon his family that's a different story."

"So, admitting that we tackled these topics in the wrong order, does Cheliax currently... have... a straightforward definition of marriage?"

"Round where I'm from it's pretty much moving into the same house together."

"Does this mean we are debating whether you need a cleric's permission to move out of someone's house, any time after you move into one? After how long?"