[CamperBob2]

What contract?

Exactly. That's the problem I have with marriage. So much for the rule against perpetuities, among other things.

Not all tricky legal issues can be covered with a "well let's just make a contract."

Sure they can. If one Fortune 500 company merges with another, the resulting contracts are thick enough to fill multiple heavy leather-bound volumes the size of major metropolitan telephone books. The lawyers are paid to think of everything that could go wrong.

So it's not debatable that an adequate legal framework for simple domestic partnerships can exist, it's just that for some reason, people don't bother.

[dragonwriter]

> That's the problem I have with marriage. So much for the rule against perpetuities, among other things.

Since a marriage is always complete within the lifetime of a person living at the time it is formed, it has no problem with the rule against perpetuities.

[CamperBob2]

Really? So I can sign a contract to work for you for the rest of my life, and no judge will blink at it?

To the best of my knowledge, only the institution of marriage and the Church of Scientology offer a deal like that.

[dragonwriter]

> Really? So I can sign a contract to work for you for the rest of my life, and no judge will blink at it?

A judge might blink at it, but not because of the Rule Against Perpetuities, which, generally, requires that a valid interest must vest within 21 years after the death of some person alive at the time the interest was formed.

A contract in which all obligations are complete at the end of any life in existence at the time the contract is formed may be invalid for any of a variety of reasons, but the Rule Against Perpetuities isn't one of them.

> To the best of my knowledge, only the institution of marriage and the Church of Scientology offer a deal like that.

Contracts granting life interests in real estate, which are also valid under the rule against perpetuities and were quite common when the rule first came into existence also involve commitments of similar duration. Commitments that last the length of a particular life (of a long fixed period of time, like 99 years) are not at all uncommon in contracts.