Nod.

...administered by a priest of a permitted church (empowered, or a lay priest of an organized church)...

"Would this do? Any man can call himself a lay priest if his church has no formal organization. The purpose is merely that it should be a respected man whose word is vouched for by something greater than himself."

"Yes, that's fine, it's just if I go home and I'm popping all over the village watering every cow, sheep, and goat for miles around I want to be able to designate somebody else to do the weddings."

"I'm not sure what this actually requires that women do, can you say what you mean by 'loyal'? Also, I think we should say that the court has to have the divorce cases judged by a man and a woman judge, if it's just a man or just a woman they might not understand everything they need to know to be fair."

"Most significantly that means to not sleep with other men, especially not in such a way as to produce children whose father could not be assured to be her husband. Many other things which create the appearance that she might be doing so, or considering it, are also considered disloyal to a lesser degree, depending on which country you ask, and higher classes typically have stricter standards than lower and city more than country. I would not be surprised if Menador or the Hellcoast had significantly different notions of what was unacceptable disloyalty before the death of Aroden; I have definitely heard Galt and Andoran differed in some ways before independence."

"I see two problems, here. First, clarifying that. A culture may have a flexible notion of disloyalty but the law should not. And two, we do not have civil courts or any civil law in effect. Andoran and Galt have perfectly functional codes of civil law and we may elsewhere decide to import one of them wholesale or with modifications but at present we have none."

....it's not bad. It's not amazing, either, but a requirement that men continue providing for any of their wife's children even after divorce is pretty good, on the national crisis front, and if the merchant wrote it it might have a chance.

"Actually bearing another man's children. It's symmetrical with making siring bastards a fine offense, sort of, and avoids having to legally define all sexual activity. I say we make the default obligations fairly narrow, and then allow people to make additional written promises by mutual consent, which can also be legally binding."

"Assessing paternity is difficult. An oath under truth magic that the lady in question is absolutely sure that a child is her husband's, at his expense if the answer is yes, would, I think, suffice. In cities that seems eminently practical; in small towns and villages perhaps not, but in villages I understand traditional marriage is stronger and the need for legal recourse rather than social is weaker."

"I had understood the lack of civil courts to be a temporary emergency measure. Do you believe, then, Your Grace, that they will not be reconvened until and unless this convention calls for them to be?"

"I think the lack of civil courts is an emergency measure in that we do not presently have a code of civil law of any kind. Evidently the Queen does not like the Code Cyprian enough to implement it on a temporary basis, and choosing any other code of civil law is not a priority for an emergency, and so we have nothing. A complete constitution will change that, and provide enough of a skeleton on which to build a civil code. But if we do not write a law that creates civil courts, or a constitution that provides for Her Majesty to create civil courts, then I think first we will be warned that we very much ought to, and if we do not heed that warning I think there will not be civil courts. Unless Her Majesty decides that democracy has failed her, which under those circumstances even as a supporter of Andoran and its principles I would concur that it, and we, had."

"Well. That... seems like an urgent matter, but one perhaps beyond the scope of this committee. I will raise it in the Trade Committee when next it meets, I believe. In the meantime... perhaps we can say that urgent cases of abandonment can be brought to a criminal court judge, until the civil courts are back in session?"

Victòria is not entirely sure what the difference is between civil law and regular law but she's pretty sure that if she asks the nobles are going to use it as an excuse to say that she doesn't know anything about how the laws should be. Maybe she can ask Lluïsa this evening.

Korva maybe thirty percent knows what a civil court is. It's the court where you didn't actually commit any crimes, so they mostly indenture you instead of mostly executing you.

"I don't actually think we need to rush it. No existing marriages were entered into under this system, so it probably shouldn't apply to any of them until the people involved make these specific promises."

"I think you are likely correct. This is a fine proposal for the basic form of marriage, and I have no particular modifications I would suggest beyond defining loyalty requirements, but there's no urgency to bringing it to the floor. I'm inclined to wait for us to have a few more ideas and bring them together."

"I think I would want to know what happens under this system if a woman leaves a man, but takes their children with her. It's clearly not a case of failure to care for her children, but I can certainly imagine people taking issue with it."

"...Well, that would be allowed, right, as long as she didn't sleep with another man?"

"I would say the most common outcomes in cases like that is for the woman to move back into her parent's home with the children, or for the woman eventually to return to her husband, because it is superior to letting her children die of poverty and that proves to be the only other option available."

"Looking on this as someone with the attitude of a traveler observing cultures from the outside, as I often found myself after I fled Cheliax: Almost every culture would consider it disrespectable. Many would call it outright disreputable such that she would find it difficult to find work in any profession but Calistria's, if she did not already have independent means to support herself. Almost all cultures would assume she had done something wrong by default. Usually the way to convince her community otherwise is for her to make credible accusations against her nominal husband and to have her family, the local priest, her lord, and/or some other patron respected by the community back her in that."

"I have known of high ladies who have done this but they have then taken great effort to conceal it from the casual observer, and my understanding in those cases is that furious political struggles were occurring out of sight between the husband's family and the wife's, to determine whether she would be forced back to him or permitted to raise his heirs out of his sight. And that the cases in which the husband's side won the struggle would have been kept quiet enough that I would never hear about them, unless his conduct later became dire enough that polite society rejected him and brought all his past sins to light. I have not in fact heard of any cases like that, but I have heard of cases where a husband was quite brutal, and it escalated past the point where blind eyes were opened, and in all those cases many past incidents of lesser severity, and actions his wife or children took in response, came to light." Never really expected listening to society gossip to prove practically useful in any way.

Blink blink. "I don't get how that would... help anything?" says Victòria, who knows approximately nothing about any other country's sexual norms. "Like — I mean, my parents weren't ever married, but if they had been, and people had decided she had to go be a whore, I don't see how... I mean she was perfectly fine at being a laundress? Or, I think some people thought it was pathetic that she hadn't just killed me, but I don't think it made her worse at her job, it seems kind of silly to tell a wizard she has to go be a whore instead just because she has a kid. And it sounds like the sort of thing that would make the orphanage problem worse too."

"Somebody doesn't have to be bad at their job for other people not to want to pay them to do it."

That doesn't really clear things up at all but Victòria isn't sure what to ask that would.

"In other countries, good reputation can open doors and allow opportunities. And one of the ways one must maintain good reputation, once you earn it, is by not associating with people of bad reputation. Thieves typically have the worst reputations among men, and if I was publicly friends with one, or even a former thief, my good reputation would vanish very quickly; to employ a former thief, not so quickly, but it would still begin to ebb away unless I redoubled my effort to maintain it. For women, thieves are less common but... Calistria's houses... are as disreputable as thieves, and a woman known to once practice such will even in Andoran or Absalom find it very difficult to find any other work unless they can escape their reputation, and past, entirely."

"...That part isn't confusing, but my mother was never a whore? She was studying to be a wizard and then she was a laundress."

"Sorry, I'm aware that as a practical matter she may have a difficult time providing for the children, especially without the daycares open, though I don't think most Chelish people - well, most of Egorian's people - are nearly so judgemental as to refuse to employ a capable woman who does have childcare arranged. I'm asking whether if, knowing the risks to herself and to them, she leaves and takes her children with her anyway, the suggested law has anything to say about it."

"Asmodean marriage contracts typically specified who would have ultimate authority over any resulting children. More often the man, but certainly not always. Without having agreed ahead of time, though, there's no trivial way to say who ought to have custody in the case of a disagreement, other than saying that it's always the father or always the mother."

Victòria is kind of confused by the concept of a father even wanting custody of his children. Her father certainly didn't. Maybe it's different for Evil nobles.

Josep thinks that saying that the father should always gets the children unless he specifically abandons them would be a fine choice actually. The Count-Regent does not sound approving of that option, though, so perhaps this is not a wise fight to pick.

"Yes, it's a difficult problem. The rules that govern situations where a parent does not wish to support their child should be quite different from the rules that govern situations where both parents want the child and are separated. I would be inclined to give preference to the parent with a more stable income and place in society, who can better raise the child to inherit that place, but that itself is not always simple to determine."

"Well, if it's a baby, obviously it's got to go with the mother, otherwise it'll starve. I guess if it's not a baby and both parents want it it makes sense to say it should go with whoever's got the better income? But I doubt it'll come up very much, I don't think most fathers are going to want to keep the kid. Probably a lot of them will be glad to have the kid gone."