  Recently, Gauza et al. (2015) reported the discovery of a companion to the
late M-dwarf, VHS J125601.92-125723.9 (VHS 1256-1257). The companion's absolute
photometry suggests its mass and atmosphere are similar to the HR 8799 planets.
However, as a wide companion to a late-type star, it is more accessible to
spectroscopic characterization. We discovered that the primary of this system
is an equal-magnitude binary. For an age $\sim300$ Myr the A and B components
each have a mass of $64.6^{+0.8}_{-2.0}~M_{\mathrm{Jup}}$, and the b component
has a mass of $11.2^{+9.7}_{-1.8}$, making VHS 1256-1257 only the third brown
dwarf triple system. There exists some tension between the spectrophotometric
distance of $17.2\pm2.6$ pc and the parallax distance of $12.7\pm1.0$ pc. At
12.7 pc VHS1256-1257 A and B would be the faintest known M7.5 objects, and are
even faint outliers among M8 types. If the larger spectrophotmetric distance is
more accurate than the parallax, then the mass of each component increases. In
particular, the mass of the b component increases well above the deuterium
burning limit to $\sim35~M_{\mathrm{Jup}}$ and the mass of each binary
component increases to $73^{+20}_{-17}~M_{\mathrm{Jup}}$. At 17.1 pc, the UVW
kinematics of the system are consistent with membership in the AB~Dor moving
group. The architecture of the system resembles a hierarchical stellar multiple
suggesting it formed via an extension of the star-formation process to low
masses. Continued astrometric monitoring will resolve this distance uncertainty
and will provide dynamical masses for a new benchmark system.
