#ttft

I already talked in the fic notes about how Catra can redeclare herself to "resume" her old life and reclaim her old possessions. Here’s my answer on carrying over a marriage between lives. TLDR; when Catra redeclares she can "re-affirm" her marriage to immediately legally resume it (they will not resume their relationship until later in life, but the marriage is important for legal reasons, as this post will outline. There's a reason we fought so hard for marriage equality).

Legally, when Catra redeclares she can choose 1) to be emancipated, 2) to “resume” her marriage. I simplified this down to just emancipation in the fic notes because marriage does, in some ways, free you from family influence, and merely redeclaring makes you a legal adult, but it’s more complicated than that. Catra obviously always resumes her marriage, and sometimes opts for emancipation as well.

In the case of emancipation, that puts her current parents at the bottom of the list of next-of-kin who can make decisions for her in a situation where she can’t (such as when in a medical coma). Family from her last life will be prioritized and her current parents will only be able to make decisions if absolutely no one else can be contacted. Only if all of her old family is dead and she’s legally unmarried could her current family make decisions for her. That is, of course, only if she wasn't emancipated from her last family, too. In that case the order is slightly flipped, with a spouse first in line, current family second, and old family third.

In the case of resuming a marriage, as in the real world, spouses are given decision-making priority (legally, this is because spouses are the only family you “choose” and presumed to be the person who you trust the most). Thus, if Catra is incapacitated and a decision needs to be made, then Adora would be contacted. If she can’t be reached, then it would go to next-of-kin. 

All of that is for times when decision-making obviously falls on others, though. Catra is legally an adult as soon as she redeclares, but there are still times when legal adults are not considered capable of making decisions for themselves. I’m sure #FreeBritney has made people aware of conservatorships, and it could potentially be argued when Catra is younger that, since she has reduced mental capacity due to her brain still developing, she needs to be under a conservatorship because she can’t make decisions for herself. I brushed up against this in the fic notes. As an example, Catra's family could decide when she's eight that hey, she should actually be in elementary school rather than private tutoring, and what's more, we're going to send her to an arts school. Catra says no, she's a mechanical engineer and 200, she doesn't want to do that. Legally they can't automatically make her since she's an adult, but they could potentially go to the courts and argue that Catra can't make decisions because her brain is still under development, so they should be allowed to send her to the school they see fit (and potentially, even further, take control of her holdings from her last life because she can't be trusted to manage them at this age. That obviously would never happen since Adora owns anything of Catra's and can manage it herself, but this is in a situation where Catra isn't married). This could happen to any reincarnator, and this is where being able to resume their marriages come in. Because Catra is married, her biological family has no case, because if legal decisions do need to be made for Catra, that falls on Adora, and no court is going to grant the biological family right to force a legal decision on a reincarnator who has a wife capable of making those decisions when that wife says no, Catra is right and these are decisions we made for her future back when she was an adult. This is what she wants. Basically, if Catra was on her own then her parents might have a case, but because Adora is there they aren't ever going to win (and this situation never arises, btw, it's just an example of how all this works). Her parents could of course refuse to pay for anything they disagree with or threaten to kick her out if she doesn't cooperate since they also aren't legally required to provide for her, but again, Catra has Adora to turn to and her shit from her last life to pay for what she needs.

Now, that example is in the case where Catra disagrees with her family's calls. Usually when she's a kid, she lets them parent her, she just has some things she draws a hard line on, like going through all of school again. Stuff like important medical decisions she will use her rights to make a personal decision on, or maybe lean on Adora if she thinks she can't reasonably (or, alternatively, her family might turn to Adora to convince/override Catra if they think she is being unreasonable. And if Adora agrees, Catra will reluctantly let her make that call. Very fussily).