Why get married?

I'm a girlfriend, and a baby mamma, and in 7 weeks of hospitalisation and several operations noone has treated me differently from a wife.

Just to provide balance: I should never have got married. I had assets and he had nothing. I have a significant private pension and he has made no provision whatsoever. Our marriage is ending and I’m completely screwed. I would be happy to give him half the equity in our house but technically he’s entitled to half of everything. It kills me that the career I have that has paid the bills and resulted in a decent pension will be lost to him on divorce. I know it’s my own fault but I was sidetracked by love etc. People, me included, see it romantically but it’s so much more than that. I wish to god I’d taken proper advice before marrying

For us it was about mostly about taxes and visas. And DH earns far more than I did so I wanted a legal right to share his money, especially as I wanted to be a sahm.

As lots of people have said, when everything is all fine and good, to some people it's 'just a formality' that they may not feel they need to prove their commitment to each other. But life is unpredictable and it's when things are not good that the protection of being married makes sense.

That being said, I genuinely felt it was different - my now DH and I had been together 6 years when we got married, we'd already been living together for most of that time, we knew we were committed etc but the marriage part still felt very special, and still does, for us it did feel like something special and important over and above being 'partners' or boyfriend/girlfriend. That's just us and everyone is different. But the legal protections are important in the, hopefully not, event of something bad happening to one or other of you.

Ah, you've just had babies.

Maybe your relationship and career are an egalitarian ideal, but for many if not most women over the years, motherhood impacts their earning power. Going part time, not taking the promotion that means a longer commute, missing out on a better role because your sleep deprived and had nits during the interview :)

That difference widens over time. In 20 years he might outearn you and have a bigger pension. You're relying on goodwill if you think he'd share pension, property, savings etc if you break up. Goodwill is not so strong if someone's run off with someone else/had a mid life crisis/etc.

You can also have a situation like children with additional needs that place huge pressure on a relationship. Unmarried, there's scope for dad to leg it and leave you on benefits with nothing but child support peanuts from him.

The most dramatic situations on here are women who've helped in partner's business, raised kids and kept house, get dumped in 50s with no work history, savings, property or pension (or even state pension entitlement).

I think marriage doesn't glue you together but if you want to do without it, you need to make financial arrangements that are roughly equivalent, which is more expensive and more faff than paying £80 or whatever for a marriage licence. You don't have to refer to yourselves as married or even tell anyone.

Yes. I've known situations like this and it's very sad for their partners, whose opinion is disregarded. Even decisions like whether to turn off life support will go to your partner's relatives, not you, if you're not married

Mainly financial reasons, especially if you have two small children.
"Childhood sweethearts" could mean nothing one day.
If not married, you could just as well be a single mother.
I wouldn't willingly put myself through such insecurity, although I don't have kids.
Married for 20 years, practical reasons purely.

That amounts literally to a fiver a week. It’s hardly an incentive to get married. It would take you a couple of years to recoup your investment.

If one of you has an annual income below the limit for income tax you can transfer the unused part of your allowance to your spouse. You cannot do it if you're not married.

A lot of women on here jump to the assumption that a woman is a low/lower earner and as such benefits financially from marriage and the protection it provides. In practice, if you earn similar amounts or the woman is the higher earner, the financial rationale isn’t there.

My friends who are higher earners haven’t got married but probably will get married in their 60’s because of inheritance tax.

Mumsnet is massively in favour of marriage. It certainly didn’t help either of my divorced friends but it does depend individual circumstances.

I felt the same as you, then my partner got ill and was diagnosed with cancer. Suddenly it's all I wanted to do - felt like a bit of security. I'm very glad we did it.

I got married last month, I feel it's made not much difference to our relationship (been together 10 years) however, our wedding was an amazing day! My DH feels like he wants to spend more time with me since we got married and go to the pub less 😅

OP, I wish you both long life and great health, but the status of spouse as NOK is very important when the chips are down. I know. If you don't get married, sort that out thoroughly.

Lots of other good points made about the finances. Being suddenly widowed (or effectivley widowed) is bad enough if things are straightforward, I can't imagine it with financial and legal complications. Again, I know.

You are nominated beneficiary now but he can change that easily enough. Do you/he own a house in one name but you are both paying the bills? Have you had to change your work to fit around your children? If you took a salary hit is he bumping your pension contributions to ensure it's fair? Do you want to be able to make decisions for each other if one of you gets sick and can't make those decisions because if not married your parents get that honour. Inheritance tax.

To protect both people. Both are working so it's not like one is not earning.

I think it’s personal. My marriage means the world to me, if you don’t feel strongly either way about getting married then you shouldn’t feel that you have to.

All the differences legally between marriage and just house sharing are in this link. For me, I would not be just a girlfriend to any man, I wanted to legally be one another's family.

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/living-together-marriage-and-civil-partnership/living-together-and-marriage-legal-differences/

If we were not married and my husband or partner as he would be, died, then his brother would inherit all the money in the bank accounts in his name. And his huge pension fund. And I would really struggle to be able to afford to live in the same way as i do now.
I would also not be the only one consulted on donating organs, and even do we or don't we switch off the life support machine.
His brother and I are utterly different people and it would be an awful awful time.

But we are married, so I get all the money, and the final say in which organs get donated . And I won't have to pay tax as inheritance tax for married people is a good thing.

We do need to make Wills and he needs to register with the Organ Donation scheme.
Intestacy works for us as we have no kids.

I have always had the opposite view, I don't understand why you wouldn't get married in your situation. It was important to me because there was always the niggle - why doesn't he want to marry me? (This was my issue, there was no reason to feel that way)

We managed to get married and still travel, work on careers etc. You want to or you don't, but there is time if it's important to you.