From the lawyer’s mouth

Our guest for this week is Multiamory’s lawyer, Melissa Hall.

Two and a half decades into Melissa’s happy polyamorous life, she got the chance to start her own law firm, Smol Law. Now she helps sustaining clients cope with life's little bullshit as a full time occupation instead of as a hobby.  

She is committed to being as generalist as a form of specialization and to using access to legal resources to help people who would otherwise be at a disadvantage. 

During this episode, Melissa addresses the following topics from her perspective as a lawyer:

• Wills and end of life

  • What should I consider when deciding who is a beneficiary?

  • What about who I choose to be executor?

• Medical decision making and power of attorney

  • I’d prefer my best friend be in charge, rather than my next of kin. What kind of paperwork do I need to set up? 

  • Is it possible to designate who gets hospital visitation rights? 

  • Are there ways to craft POA in order to include multiple people?

• Cohabitation

  • How tricky is it to get a cohabitation agreement set up between more than two adults? 

  • What about two or more people buying communal property? How to ensure that all the financial responsibility doesn’t just fall on one or two people? 

• Using other structures as alternatives to marriage 

  • I’ve heard of some polyamorous folks setting up LLCs in order to share finances. How does that work? Are there benefits to that? Are there pitfalls?

• Prenups

  • Any advice for prenuptial agreements in order to keep finances, big purchases, old debts separate?

• Families and chosen families 

  • Third parent adoptions.

  • Chosen family recognition legislative approaches.

  • How can you legally and financially protect yourself if you’re the homemaker or primary childcare provider of a polycule, especially if you aren’t gainfully employed? 

  • Are there known recent examples of a multi-partner relationship being used as legitimate grounds for legal action against someone? Being used to reduce parental custody or access to otherwise shared financial resources?

Find more about Melissa on her law firm’s website, www.smol-law.com, on Twitter at @CasualLaw, or @Vrimj on other social media. Her Patreon website is here.