“It is a recognition that other types of family exist,” he said. The paperwork just formalised it.” 
 
 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, 16 years before the country’s constitutional court legalised gay marriage. A ruling by the constitutional court in April 2016 made Colombia the fourth South American country to definitively legalise same-sex marriage, after Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.
– "We want to make what's intimate, public." So says 23-year-old Victor Hugo Prada, who is gearing up to marry the two loves of his life after Colombia agreed to legalize a three-way union between Prada and his two boyfriends—perhaps the first such legalized "throuples" union not only in the South American country, but in the world, the Guardian notes. The paperwork joining Prada, Manuel Bermudez, and John Alejandro Rodriguez, which has already been signed off on by a Medellin notary, makes them a bona fide family unit in the eyes of the law, including for inheritance purposes, per News Corp Australia. "We wanted to validate our household ... and our rights," Prada said in a video making the rounds in Colombian media on Monday. German Rincon-Perfetti, the lawyer behind the groundbreaking document, is careful to note this isn't considered a "marriage" under Colombian law. "A marriage is between two people, so we had to come up with a new word: a special patrimonial union," he says, per the Guardian. Bermudez and Rodriguez were the first to enter into the relationship 18 years ago, as well as the first male gay couple in the nation legally recognized in 2000 for their union. There was originally a fourth member in this polyamorous relationship: Alex Esneider Zabala, who started a relationship with Bermudez and Rodriguez in 2004. Zabala died of cancer three years ago, however, just one year after Prada also entered the picture. "There are a lot of throuples [around the world], but it is completely clandestine," Rincon Perfetti notes. A ceremony for the three men is being planned to take place in the next few months.