Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Hypothetical Question time, UltraWoman/Superman marriage

One of the stories I have in the works marries UltraWoman to Superman. The question I have is, what is needed to get married? It's been about 7 and a half years since I went and got my marriage license so I don't exactly recall what was required.

What is needed would vary from state to state. At bare minimum, I think all the states require that you have a marriage license, someone who has the authority to conduct the ceremony, and two witnesses. Some states have additional requirements, such as having blood tests or being a minimum age. (I believe the additional requirements are prerequisite to obtaining the marriage license.)

Of course, since Metropolis is in the fictitious state of New Troy, you are free to add or subtract requirements as you see fit.

Joy,
Lynn

I was married out of the U.S., so I'm not sure what the requirements are, but I would assume that the basics would be some form of legal identification. There might be a clerk who would accept floating above the ground as proof of identity, but civil servants are known to be rule sticklers, so they might run into someone who wouldn't. Then, again, since they can fly around the world fairly quickly and easily, I'm sure they can find a country and/or church where people wouldn't be so picky about the rules.

Is it necessary that Superman and Ultra Woman get married as opposed to Lois and Clark? If LnC are already married legally, and nobody knows about the destruction of Krypton, they could always say that their union had already been sanctified (is that the right word?) "elsewhere".

It would totally depend on the state. I was married in 2007 in NY. All I had to do was (with my now-husband) go to one of the local town halls, show our ids, and sign some paperwork (to have the information down - names, the church we were marrying at, the wedding date, etc. We went for lunch, came back and hour later, and the paperwork was waiting for us - since we were not being married by a JOP, but having a church wedding.

If you are having Superman and UltraWoman exchange vows in a church, they have their own separate requirements. I was married in a Roman Catholic church and had to (with my now-husband) attend pre-martial classes (also known as pre-Canaan classes). I don't know about other faiths.

I really do want them to have licenses, but I'm not sure they'd be able to show ID (for the record, I think that's consistent enough across states to assume that New Troy would require it or something similar). Then again, I think I was going to have them elope somehow so I guess that could circumvent that.

Even if they elope, if they're in the US, they'll have to show ID. Las Vegas is known for "quickie" weddings, but that's because Nevada has no waiting period to give you a license. But you still have to show ID to get the license. So you might want to focus on how they go about getting identification in their super-hero personas.

Either way, they would need to have a license. You can't marry at a church without the license from the state, so no worries there! (You sign the license typically after the ceremony, sometimes before, or, in our case, our priest had us sign at the rehearsal two days prior to the wedding for a time saver.)

I can see it being easier for Superman to get some ID. UltraWoman is harder because of the mask.

This relates to a Superman-Lois Lane wedding, not a Superman/Ultrawoman wedding. I can't help but think of Wendy Richards' fine Green Card . Superman is an "illegal alien" and has to make a quickie marriage. Events ensue.

If you sign at the rehearsal and someone gets cold feet at the last minute doesn't that mean that legally they are still married even if they don't have the church ceremony?

I see a story there, probably involving Lucy.

Another fanfic comes to mind, of course - it's Erin Klingler's The Accidental Husband . Lois is getting married to Lex in 2 weeks (for the sake of the fic, all the stuff about blowing up the Daily Planet never happened) but it turns out that she's already married - to Clark! Neither of them knew it - how could it have happened? Really fun fic to read, with a lot of character insight.

I remember reading that story, Iolanth. Don't think a green card makes much sense, though. With that said I found a resource that I think I should share. There's a website called DMV.org which lists EVERY state's requirements for a state ID. I decided to use the State of Virginia as the New Troy requirements for a state-issued ID.

The requirements are as follows:
The problem I'm running into is Clark can't very well use his birth certificate without problems (nor could Lois without outing herself). And as the John Doe/Lois and Clarks episode shows, they don't have any evidence of his permanent residency. I assume they (Superman and Ultra Woman) would use the Superman Foundation address as their permanent address but the proof of ID is the problem. They need TWO to prove identity. I'm guessing the superpowers would definitely count as one but as I'm planning on having this happen post-season 4 there's still the possibility of other New Kryptonians (we know that's the case but the government's not going to just assume that's unlikely).

I was married in California. I'm pretty sure my then-fiance and I signed the license when we applied for it. It was the officiator and two witnesses signing it after the ceremony that made the marriage legal. Then we had to file the signed license. The certificate we ended up with was a copy of the signed form on official paper. There's no "original" per se, and you can request (for a fee) as many copies of the license as you want.

As far as timing goes, we got the license immediately, but there was a certain time frame in which it was valid. I think it was valid from ten days after the issue date until a month later.

A coworker of mine ended up in a catch-22, and I don't remember how he resolved it. He needed to renew his driver's license, which required him to show his birth certificate. He had lost his birth certificate, so he needed to get a new copy, which required him to show his driver's license as ID.

As far as Superman and Ultra Woman go, I think they would need to approach ID issues as immigrants. They obviously wouldn't have US-issued birth certificates. They could claim that Krypton didn't issue birth certificates, or that they were destroyed with the planet. Making fake Kryptonian birth certificates seems risky to me.

How do immigrants or tourists get a marriage license? I guess someone who is here legally would have a passport they could use as id.

Alternatively, what if they have a "Kryptonian" ceremony? How does the government recognize foreign marriages? If SM and UW get married elsewhere, especially if it's in international waters and not in any country's jurisdiction, could they claim that they followed Kryptonian custom and therefore have a valid marriage? I could see Lois and Clark going this route, especially if they were already legally married in their civilian identities.

My husband and I were married out of the country. We needed to have a marriage certificate from the country in which we were married and present it to the U.S. Consulate office (i.e. Embassy) in that country to apply for a visa for him to return to the U.S. (He had been here previously on a student visa, which expired upon his graduation.) Our (first and official) "wedding" was basically signing the official paperwork with a notary with his family. We later had another more traditional "wedding" (repeating our vows) for my family.

We had more trouble trying to add him on to my health insurance (years later) because they wouldn't accept our out-of-country marriage certificate (proving that he was my husband). Granted it looks like a dot-matrix printout with foreign stamps on it, but - hey - that's not *my* fault. It took me saying to the corporate idiots that "if the certificate was good enough for the U.S. government, it should be good enough for you" to finally get them to shut up about it and accept him as my legal husband. :rolleyes:

Michael

PS:

LOIS: *Highly* advanced? They still have concubines and leashes!
RALPH: And your point being...?

All states have minimum ages, generally 16 with parental consent, below 16 on by judicial decree, and in almost all cases 18 without parental consent, although some states have pregnancy exemptions to parental consent under age 18.

Whether they would make Superman and Ultrawoman prove they are of age is another issue though.

I just noticed your question, Virginia. While it isn't "required" that they do (you know, different culture's perspectives on families and all that. For all the non-supers know, Ultra-Woman's culture is a single-woman culture and doesn't feel the need or desire to get married) I suspect there's an element of "they need respectability" to this.

Lois is Ultra-Woman and not only are there rumors about her getting involved with Clark a la SLV but she's also pregnant. I think it's their way of throwing people off the scent (although I can VERY easily seeing this backfire on them).

This one sounds interesting, Christina. Get to writing. I hope this doesn't mean you've shelved Red K again. I know, I know. You've got to go where your Muse leads you.

Nope, still tweaking and playing with "When Pheromones Attack." This one's just been sitting on my computer for a little bit and the idea was wanting a little tweaking.

Until recently Muslim women could get a driver's license with full face coverings. Maybe that is still the case in Metropolis.