To think that marriage is an outdated concept?

Your children can be assigned your DB pension if they are under 25 or financially dependent on you due to disability etc. The law around DB pensions is about provision for those who financially depend on the deceased, which as previous poster said, a spouse or civil partner or minor child would - you don’t earn all the benefits of a DB pension unlike a DC one (which you can assign to anyone) so it’s unreasonable to expect an employer to pay the benefits for a life lying of somebody of your choosing who wasn’t financially reliant on you.

These days most women can't afford to stay at home so that arguments void. Personally I earn more than my DP, we have a child together. I don't see how getting married will benefit me as I went back to work FT after mat leave.

My kids have birth certificates - that’s a provable legal relationship. If I could with this particular pension, I’d leave it to them as direct blood relatives. I don’t have a partner.

There’s nothing like being a smug married. Don’t take your situation for granted though, anything could happen!

@bmw6 no he wasn’t a SAHD - he worked but he earned less than me and preferred to waste money on booze and other pursuits which destroyed the marriage. I was careful, hard-working and the saver and my savings were duly awarded to him.

Believe it or not, a lot of women are in the same situation, working to support the family and looking after the kids while they are lumbered with a deadbeat partner. It’s not always the case that people have the luxury of a stay at home parent.

No, I don’t take the point about the spouse’s pension. It costs ME more to be a single person household (and support my kids) right now, never mind later! And of course I lost savings in the divorce.

And now I won’t be able to give anyone the benefit of the spouse’s pension because the big sky fairy and the courts decided that if you go to church and a man wearing a dress (or other official) says some magic words you are entitled to more privileges. I was married….so why shouldn’t I nominate someone to get my pension? I paid in the same contributions as married colleagues!! I now choose to be a free woman not tied to a marital contract.

In fact with a defined contribution scheme I can pass on the pot to my kids or anyone I wish, but not with the more old-fashioned schemes. That is, at least until the coming Budget.

Because its a pension specifically for the Spouse.
When a couple are married they share a household and its expenses. If one dies the remaining spouse has to cover those same expenses by themselves, at least for a while if they need to sell the marital home and downsize.

So it makes sense that there is financial support in place for the widow/er.

If you want your children to be provided for surely that's what Life Insurance and Wills are there for?

It's a pity you feel your divorce settlement was unfair on you, but presumably your DH was a SAHD while you were the major breadwinner so his career suffered?

I also loved being married to my late DH. And being married has saved me a great deal of grief and money on becoming a widow that I would have had on top of grief at his death had we not been married.

The reason marriage confers rights to e.g. spouses' pensions is because marriage is a provable legal contract. Living together for ten years is not a provable legal contract and thus cannot be used to confer rights of any sort. It doesn't discriminate against the unmarried, the unmarried choose to be discriminated against when there is a simple and easy means of avoiding discrimination.
And what's archaic in making a commitment to a life-long relationship, which also confers rights if the relationship fails?

If the OP does think this supports their argument they are illiterate.0

Thank you for sharing your unhappy experience. But it does support the fact that marriage protects the weaker partner, and this is usually the woman. In that respect marriage works in favour of the majority of women.

@bifurCAT And why should the lower earner not be protected? They are presumably the lower earner because they have given up a career/job to raise children etc. As to the higher earner, usually the man, if that earner is a man the advantages he gets out of marriage are: support at home for his career, someone to take care of his children, a longer life, because men who marry on average live longer than those who do not (this does not apply to women).
Good deal all round by the looks of it, esp if you are the man in the marriage.

Having recently separated from a partner of 18 year but who I was not married to I found Marriage - Divorce provides a framework for separating assets and agreeing support for children. I spoke to so many legal people who basically said there isn't a framework and even agreements we could write would not be legally enforceable in the way they would be if we were married. We remained amicable(ish) and worked it out it helped financially we were probably at the same level but IF you have in anyway sacrificed economically to be with your partner/ have children I would suggest you get married or do a civil partnership .

Marriage/civil partnership is just a piece of paper but one that stops a lot of other paper.
We got a civil partnership because I was fed up of doing paperwork to make my partner a beneficiary and not my parents for my pension, life insurance X2 etc.
It took 20 minutes for the service, 30 minutes to register intent and cost £100. We also spent £30 on a new dress for me and £150 on an unnecessary but lovely lunch with our 2 witnesses at our favourite restaurant.
Most people don't know we have done it but now he's my legal next of kin and defacto beneficiary alongside our daughter

Both civil and religious (Christian or Jewish) marriages are legal in the UK. You do not have to have a religious wedding, you can have a civil marriage - which is not the same as a civil partnership but which is recognised everywhere in the world as the legal contract of marriage.

Well, that's the most sensible post I have ever seen you make.0

Also gives rights to widow or widower.

You've met some crap families, sadly.

I suspect you're probably right re sleepwalking. Purely because marriage is a process that has to be actively engaged in. It's an extra trigger. Obviously lots of people still do it without finding out the legalities, but it's one more trigger process than doing all the same things except getting married.

I agree. You are much more likely to sleepwalk into cohabitating, loose the momentum in your career, then end up without rights. My cousin gave up her job and was a sahm for a decade. She was married and it still took 5 years to settle they divorce and get a fair share of 'their ' money that he was able to earn by her taking the 100% of the childcare etc and giving up her well paid job.
If they weren't married she could have got nothing.

How you get married is down to the individual. You can do it with 100 guests or a random witness. Or you can have a civil partnership. But some legal protection is wise.

Someone once told me that marriage is just a piece of paper after we’d had a conversation about how I was happy in my relationship with my husband. Just sounded like jealousy to me. That bit of paper is worth everything to me and it affords me protections that just being together wouldn’t.

The older I get the harder it seems to make what once appeared to be simple decisions. Everyone used to know what marriage was. But then people didn’t divorce and women didn’t have careers. Everything has changed and yet we are left with this ancient unwritten contract - unwritten except for a certificate, like 25m swimming or something! There needs to be a thorough review of marriage and divorce laws. I doubt that will ever happen as it suits so many SAHMs. Of course not many women can afford to be SAHMs any more…

Civil partnership isn't the answer, because it lacks the international recognition of marriage. It's fine to have internal alternatives such as a CP or cohabitant rights whether opt in or opt out, but as @Simonjt pointed out, these things often evaporate once you're outside the country in which they were conferred. There isn't anything that provides the same comprehensive acknowledgment of the relationship as marriage. It is without equivalent.

Not everyone travels, of course, so it's not always applicable. I'd think it was quite unusual for a couple to be sure they won't be going outside the country at all though.

The same is broadly true of not signing it. Nobody ever stands over you and explains the legal and financial implications of not having a marriage contract when having DC, living in partnership, taking maternity leave, dying and all the other things women with male partners tend to do whether married or not. You don't get a written explanation of the implications of either option.

Which suggests we need to be more generally educated on the issue.

And what I am saying is there is the ideal and there is the reality.
It is better to protect yourself as best you can with the reality in mind not the ideal.
That doesn't mean people shouldn't work hard to change the reality, just that they shouldn't leave themselves vulnerable because they believe the ideal should be the reality.

Everyone should coldly and logically look at their own situation and do what is in their long term best interests.

It was definitely drummed into me by my otherwise kind and very sensible parents that living with a partner unmarried was not “respectable” or wise. So I eventually followed their usually good advice. For me, that wasn’t the right advice because I was always the main breadwinner and child raiser too. I wasn’t a CEO or lawyer but not was I on minimum wage, there are a multitude of jobs in between! They believed in marriage because it was how it had always been and it worked. And they knew women who had ended up abandoned and destitute because they were unmarried. But times have changed and now it’s not suited to everyone’s circumstances.

Going by the trend younger generations will be living with parents until they are 35!