Hi, everyone! This is just an explanation of the AU world and its laws, because I know there are lots of questions!

The first thing I'd like to address would be divorce.

Divorce is rare in this AU, only about 5-10% of couples get divorced, compared to America's 50%. Now, some couples never grow to love each other, and instead are best friends who divorce and obtain "widow" status. (I think the government would use it as an umbrella term.) Actual divorce in the case of abuse, mistreatment, cheating, or other things result in "widow" status as well. The abuser (obviously) gets sent to prison.

In the case of people like Santiago, they do have soulmates. In Santiago's specific case, I picture that he just really doesn't care about his timer, and thoroughly convinced himself that Flora is his soulmate after he saw her for the first time and began stalking her. There are cases where this happens after a person's timer freezes (meaning their soulmate died before they met) and they go crazy, but Santiago is a rare case, where he's basically just crazy from the beginning.

Santiago's soulmate is alive, meaning he hasn't met him/her yet. I imagine his timer to still have a few years, and probably since he went to jail, it's only gone up.

As for the laws, this is tricky for me. I believe that there would be laws in place regarding child-bearing, marriage, living arrangements, and probably laws that prohibit cheating. The child laws are incredibly specific. An example would be in the chapter that they get married, the clerk says, "You both have high profile jobs, so we won't expect children for a while" or something to that extent. This is a law/act that states that the demand a job has on a person relates to when they have a child. It's an algorithm developed by scientists (haven't they done enough?) where they've calculated the perfect amount of time it takes for the new couple to become acquainted and settle into their new lives depending on the rigor their job requires.

An example would be Flora and Helia. They were given a year and a half because of Flora's stressful nursing job and Helia's high rank in his grandfather's company.

Another would be if two doctors were soulmates. They would probably be given about two and half to three years.

This is invasive, but not as invasive as it could be, which is why is stayed for so long.

The child-bearing law was removed because, once Flora's experience came to light, more and more women and men came forward about how they thought the law was unfair that the government was making the decision that everyone had to have kids, whether they wanted to or not.

The move-in law was also removed. People wanted the choice of when, or even if, they wanted to begin living together.

The only laws that stayed (regarding soulmates) were the marriage law and the timer law. The marriage law was taken down a few notches. I imagine they removed the requirement to marry after two weeks, and have instead put it to a year or two. I also imagine they have decided to give people the choice to marry their soulmate. As for the timer law, it is still required that every 16-year-old get them implanted.

I hope that clears up the questions and that I didn't cause more confusion! I'm so thankful that you all took the time to read this story and I appreciate all of the feedback! If you have anymore questions, feel free to shoot me a message, and I can answer you and update this little page!