I don't really understand getting married

Which makes your point that she's single even less relevant

It's not a fact, so that'll be where you went wrong.

First of all, the tax system doesn't just mean inheritance tax. You will have to look beyond IHT in order to understand the difference that being married makes across the taxation system as a whole. Start with CGT, then look at marriage allowance. Neither have anything to do with inheritance tax.

There are other ways that your initial claim about a solicitor being able to replicate all the provisions of marriage were wrong, too. A will in your favour can be changed without you knowing, whereas if your spouse divorces you, you're going to find out. No solicitor can change any of this.

In England and Wales, an unmarried father doesn't have PR until listed on the birth certificate, whereas a married father has it immediately. In UK immigration law, if you're sponsoring an unmarried partner you usually need to show two years of cohabitation, which is more paperwork and faff, whereas this isn't a requirement with a spouse. A spouse has an easier path to make a claim on a deceased partner's estate that doesn't make adequate provision than an unmarried partner does.

On the positive side, not my area but I'd heard pretty much all pensions allow an unmarried partner to benefit these days? It's a lot better than it used to be, in that respect.

Now, not all of these things will be relevant to any given couple. Some of them will be actively undesirable. You might specifically not want your baby's father to have PR at birth, for example. You might never have been abroad and never plan to. You might want to be able to leave your estate to someone other than your partner and them find it harder to challenge that.

But this is why it's so important to understand how all this actually works, and to not generalise.

We didn’t have a party, just 6 people at a registry office. The point of getting married is to be committed to someone and to demonstrate that commitment. The state of marriage also confers on the partners the legal rights and obligations detailed by other posters here. Try not being married, your partner is seriously ill and his parents turn up at the hospital with different ideas on his care. A friend of ours has been in a long term lesbian relationship for over 30 years. Her partner is now in a nursing home with dementia and the partner’s daughter has totally shut her out of all decision making concerning her care.

I don't get your point.

It's entirely possible to be single and want to be in a relationship.

It's entirely possible to want to be in a relationship but not want to be married.

@AlcoholSwab there is no differentiation in the circumstances you have identified. Maintenance for children would be the same . You might look to a financial settlement but the fact of having children when discussing higher earning females is a separate point. Also nb they might have capital, pensions of their own that is subject to that financial settlement carve up!

Given the divorce rate and financial consequences, only a blind love sick fool would get married these days if they had assets in place and I include high achieving, childless middle aged women or financially secure divorcees in that, not just men.

There is also a strong social class bias too.

Working class couples generally don't need to bother with.marriage as earnings and assets are not likely to differ much during a lifetime. The state will step in to support a single mum in the event of a relationship break down, so the financial safety net of welfare benefits is ever present.

For middle class women like most on here, marriage still makes sense because hypergamy still plays a major role in partner selection for most women in this cohort. Middle class women are also more likely to have 'careers' as opposed to mere 'jobs', so many do take an earnings and pension hit post childbirth.

My husband is related to me by law same way my children are related by law
That's the way we like it .

Love that story @Zampa 👏

OP you don’t need a big wedding unless you want the whole event. (Which is fine if you want it, but don’t need to).

a registry office wedding is pretty cheap, not far off the cost of sorting a couple of wills.

what’s your situation?

You’re liable for inheritance tax on significantly less money if you’re not married.

@Vod "Where exactly do you imagine you heard this?"
Well,I inferred it from the fact that people
Iiable for Inheritance tax or entitled
to service pensions are the only people who benefit from marriage.

Or even, as many many people have posted, that you don’t actually have to spend a lot to get married.

Same here.

This.

So @Springisnear4 - what’s your conclusion? Did you understand the legal issues or was that something you’d not thought about?

Where exactly do you imagine you heard this?

So there are a very few circumstances where you can't mitigate marriage discrimination. But for the vast majority of us there's no benefit at all. Good to hear.

The big one is the taxation system, which doesn't just relate to IHT either. The differences kick in long before one of you dies! Though it's an excellent point that part of the reason so few estates are affected is the existence of the preferential treatment for married couples.

Inheritance tax as you’ve already pointed out and some survivors’ pensions. We had to produce our marriage certificate for me to be named as the beneficiary of a military pension.

oh that’s a shame!

@Vod "There's no solicitor who can make the government treat you the same way as a married couple when you're not."

In what way?

No @skipit8103 but I do occasionally bump into one of them on threads about eloping with Mumsnet witnesses!