In the coming months Colombia will celebrate the first legalised union of three men in the country and possibly the world.
Last month a public notary in Medellín signed the paperwork formalising the union between Victor Hugo Prada, Manuel Bermudez and Alejandro Rodriguez. Local newspapers declared it the first three-way gay marriage.
However, in a legal sense theirs is not a marriage, says Germán Rincon-Perfetti, the lawyer who drew up the document. “By law a marriage is between two people, so we had to come up with a new word: a special patrimonial union.”
The document states that the three of them constitute a family and are each others’ legal partners, the Guardian reported.
Bermudez and Rodriguez have been together for 18 years and were the first gay male couple in Colombia to receive formal legal recognition of their partnership in 2000.
