Speicial Provisions Made for Married Couples in SL

With the increase of matromonial bliss here in Second Life, I've been wondering when and if there are going to be speicial provisions made for married couples such as group land allotments and most importantly name changes. It would be nice for couples that are joined in marriage to not only share land as well as last names. I know that group land is possible now, but that is only if three or more are included in that group. I'd like to see something provided especially for couples.

Does anyone have any information as to whether or not the Lindens are going to provide something like this? I do remember this mentioned awhile ago but hasn't been mentioned again. Any and all information welcome

They recently said it's still on the agenda, but not at the top of the list. They have other, more pressing things they are addressing first. At least I think that's what they said.

What Maggie said.

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there's also shared edit using the calling card feature. with that and group land, two avs can pretty much function as one. a common name is not a bad idea as long as the people are able to choose it. if it's based on a formula, they might end up with something like fang or changlight ha ha ha would people pronouce that chang-light or change-light?

I would love to see a system of hyphenated name adoption.

For example, Taeja Midnight-Diaz and Cristiano Diaz-Midnight.

Pros:

Each partner takes the other's last name and puts it before their own, signifying how important they hold each other to be.

The hyphenated title serves as a wedding-band. Everyone with a hyphenated joined-name advertises their "taken" status constantly, right above their head. It's not even necessary to peek in their profile to see "Partner" or the inevitable dedication quote.

Other players, particularly newer ones, can still see the name that a resident started with. There will still be some Diaz left in Taeja, and Cris will always be left with a bit of Midnight. Less confusion, particularly when older players who know most of each other and their histories are interacting with newer players, who do not know all of this.

It's an impartial, equivalent solution, and doesn't rely on notions of either couple's gender (apparent SL gender or RL gender). As a bonus, when the system is implemented, we won't have to endure a "Second Life's marriage system is blatantly sexist" thread from everybody's favorite Social Democrat.


Cons:

Longer names. I'd feel kind of bad for a "Pennyfeather-Rosencrantz"

But please don't allow non-heterosexual couples to share special provisions! I think the passage is "yea verily, for if a man should lie with a man in the manner of a woman, or a woman lie with a woman in the manner of a man, or any whosoever shall covet their neighbor's asshat, he is unclean and shall not share special provisions".

Am I the only with the New Standard Revised King George translation?

The above is a parody of recent "Defense of Marriage" initiatives and represents the opposite of the author's opinion. Any who says otherwise is itchin' for a fight. -Eds.

Bindis! The new SL fashion statement. Please look for the hot new styles at Malachi's Maladies in Miru. Note: will not attach to male avatars, may cause you hassle with the TSA.

(note to self: please ensure that you actually have made bindis for sale prior to announcing them, even if in jest... get less "I don't see em" IMs that way)

As of now the bindis mentioned above are available.

cool idea

Also, maybe everyone is already on agreement on this, but just in case not: I'd make it so that "married" is not equivalent to "partner". Let's not forget, some people might choose to partner with a very good friend or business acquaintence, or another alt of theirs. "married/namechanged" couples should have to be partners first, but not all partnerships should require a namechange.

Interesting concept, partnering with one's own alt... is that narcissism or different?

Pituca-

I think that the namechange thing should not permit residents to make up new last names for themselves. FairChang is certainly the business name/image for the two of you, and that's fine. For your resident names, however, I think that you should be restricted to names that already exist, and the result still somehow show that a "merge" has taken place. Several reasons:

-Being able to change your name due to "marriage" would become abused/overused (depends on how you look at it) just like Group Titles; people who form "groups" with no other theme than that "For the purpose of being able to decorate the group founder's (and sole member's) name with clever titles like "Total Biotch" and "Now 10% More Tasty". For groups, this isn't necessarily a problem, but supposedly "Marriage" is supposed to be something rather special, and I'd rather not see people get married in SL just so that they can greet me in the welcome area as "Adolf and Ava Hitler" or some similiar such fun. I've no problem with people who want to change their last name to something silly/off-putting, but getting SL-Married to do it seems a bit off.

-Continuity. The hyphenated name system would ensure that Pituca Chang always turns you up in the find searches, before, during and (god forbid) even after a marriage with another resident. You will always be Pituca Chang, a bit, even if that gets added to (if you choose) by becoming Pituca Fairlight-Chang. Your forum posts, references to you by others, objects owned/created/sold by you will still accurately reflect who Pituca Chang is.

-Again, it's something that's much easier to hard-code. Once set up, the hyphenated name-system would only require an additional toggle to be selected in the Partnership process. Being able to choose new names would require more work on the Lindens end, for every single marriage and every single divorce that takes place. Couple gets married, selects "Exchange names" from the partner signup page, and voila. Get divorced months later, deselect.

I'd make it necessary to be partners before becoming allowing namechange, because partnering is already a commitment; I think that married couples in SL should be considered one subset of "Partner" relationships.

You and Garth will always be Fairchang to me. As long as you keep making the boats! Get cracking!

Oh, and I almost forgot. OBVIOUSLY we are talking about human av's here. No marriage rights should be given to other classes of av's please, though some others like furries and robots should be given some sort of "pet" or "concubine" status that is similiar to, though lesser than, real marriage.

o.O I truly hope you are kidding

I agree Taeja.

Also, there can be two check boxes to opt-in


Marriage
Partners


And divorce of marriages and dissolution of partners should be really costly - say, $1,500L with a 3 day waiting period.


Just another day in paradise!


_/_/_/

I endorse this feature and/or service, and look forward to making everyone call me nephilaine protagonist-protagonist.

And bouncing girl baby could be anna protagoinist-protagoinist

bouncing babies????

Stop to turn babies physical!!

The goal for the partners/marriage feature is to allow a shared name and a 2 person group for shared land. There have been a few things standing in the way of implementing the full feature -- changing names affects calling cards, which in turn affects the database, which is as you know in the process of being upgraded.

We originally were thinking about hyphenating names, but the resultant names are sometimes too long. The alternative is to allow one of the partners to change their name to the other's, or for both to choose a new name in common. I suspect the final decision will depend on your feedback plus assessing the time to implement and the impact on the database.

As was mentioned earlier, the feature is still on the list for development, but it's important that we complete the current work addressing system performance first. In the meantime, thanks for the ideas!

We must also look to prevent unfortunate liasons between furry-cat and furry-dog, not to mention furry lions and lamb type avs, as they defy the natural order of creation!

Yay unnatural!!!!!

what happens if you and a partner pick a new name together and then you get divorced? do you keep the new name or both change back to the old names? might be a nice way to get a last name you really want if you keep it.

... in a box

The problem with "taking" the name of your beloved is duplicate names. While not a real issue in Real Life (we have social security numbers or other such cattle brandings that set us apart), what happens in Second Life when there are two Garth Changs?

A few ideas come to mind, here. The first would be a suffix or prefix indicating the partnered or martial status of an individual. At first I thought something like O-Name, signifiying a wedding or commitment band, unity, oneness, but I rather like the idea of coming up with something new to add to the end of a name, much like Jr. and Esq. work in real life. That addition would indicate your connection to someone else. I think a great way to do this would be the addition of a new glyph to the SL alphabet, maybe a wedding band or an infinity symbol, or two rings joined.

I believe the custom of taking anothers name infers gender, and some residents choose to change gender (and indeed, species!) at a whim. A hyphenation like Hygiey suggested would be ideal. The names could end up long, yes, but most residents who have a title attached have really long visual names anyway (-~=* [Insert name of a club here] VIP *=~- Jane Doe), so a longer last name visually isn't a big deal.

On the calling card side, I'd assume that the database uses pointers to say who someone is in a calling card list (our Keys, for instance). The name change should only have to happen one place, our actual user account. Programatically, I don't see how it could be that hard, eg:

if ( AVATAR_PARTNERED_TO != NULL_KEY ) { llMakePrefix(AVATAR_PARTNERED_TO); }, so in the case of the lovely and talented Pituca and her beloved Garth, it would merge the two only in a symbolic sense, and not one that causes changes to the database on whole.