Thanks Kevin for your Spouse Rules. We adopted most of them into our play. I also added them to my Player's Reference Cards that I put together: file:///D:/Avocations/Table%20Games/Carcassonne/Passons/eldrcarc.pdf
(see the third page) - Having the cards is helpful when we only play occasionally.
I referred to your Spouse rules in my BGG posting:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/111436.
I was wondering what you do about the aspect of the Count Rules where you can "parachute" into a scoring situation by another player, or in the end game of the Count of Carcassonne rules where it seems the town empties out on unfinished projects?
In browsing Board Game Geek on the Count, I found a controversy over the cut-throat tactics of moving all the meeples out of Carcassonne at the end of the game:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/58335 (Scoring with empty features) and
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/71146 (avoiding Farmer Market Confusion) - certainly not the kind of "keeping peace in the household play" you describe in your spouse rules using the Count's Carcassonne tiles as the starting place for your meeples! In fact some of the BGG reviews of the Count state they generally don't play it because it is so aggressive in stealing points. And that is with only moving meeples in to Carcassonne when your tile play scores points for some one else - not having them already there to begin with!
Thank you again for some very constructive ideas.
- eldrbarry (My Carcassonne web page:
http://www.eldrbarry.net/hatr/carclink.htm)