Marriage - yay or nay?

I can see a marriage-lite working only where there are no children in the relationship and the partnership is finacially balanced. Therein lies the rub - people may go into a relationship with all good intentions about being sensible and pragmatic if the relationship ends. Problem is that if the details of the relationship change (children, illness, inheritance to name but a few) it gets harder to be sensible and pragmatic if there is a break-up

I dont agree with Devlin's jaundiced view of marriage. Many of my family and friends are in long term marriages and I dont see in their relationships the selfishness and self of entitlement Devlin referred to.

Yes, reading your post properly I thought you might be talking about PACS: I remember it coming in. And I think you have a good point about a possible opening for "marriage-lite": at the moment it's living together, with no legal recognition or protection at all, or marriage if you're straight, civil partnership if you're gay.

Huh. I'm actually talking about the PACS in France, TDI, which really is marriage lite for both/all sexes. If civil partnership in Britain is like you say, than I can see an opening for a marriage-lite style partnership which would be beneficial to both parties.

Thanks, MooncupGoddess, I hadn't realised that Theala's original post was about a different country.

Devlin11, are you reading the same thread as everyone else?

Never get married. The institution fails miserably with selfishness, entitlement, and biased family court law. People are much better off keeping their resources to themselves in this day and age, investing in retirement, and leaving others to fend for themselves.

The notion of the nuclear family has been broken over the last 60 years, and will continue to be until western cultures collapse under entitlement programs. Japan is already experiencing this as young men opt out of going for the time honored traditions of "protector" and "provider". They work jobs that require them to pay as few taxes as possible. DV shelters, welfare, and government grants for scholarships dry up as tax revenue decreases.

Marriage is dead, and no one will pay the price for it's death.

Josie - Theala is talking about the civil partnership laws in the country she lives in, which isn't the UK. My understanding like TDI's is that in Britain civil partnership has exactly the same legal obligations etc as marriage. (I didn't know about the adultery thing though, that's interesting.)

Hence why people on this thread are saying that if you're keen on civil partnership why not just get married. I appreciate that the connotations of 'marriage' (burden of tradition, oppression of women, role of religion etc) are very different from that of 'civil partnership' (it's civil and it's a partnership, what's not to like?). But really - it's just a linguistic distinction.

Actually dissolution of a civil partnership is exactly like divorce, except that adultery isn't grounds for a dissolution. The court has the same power to divide up assets as in divorce. I see an urban myth in the making here.

Definitely not necessary to name change on marriage. I only changed my name recently and that was purely my choice. I wanted to celebrate the fact that we had been married for a long time.

My surname is not really part of my identity but then it never was. I am Gnome, the De Plume bit is for administrative purposes to separate me from the other Gnomes

I do see a difference between living together and marriage, I'm afraid I do see a lesser commitment. I'm afraid I do discount the living together years. DH & I have been together for practically all our adult lives but I measure the time from when we got married (ie stood up in front of people and made a public declaration of commitment) not from some other (and to me) lesser date.

JosieRosie I'm not judging you personally but you were asking for views!

I don't know what makes you so sure of yourself with regards to civil partnerships, wamster. As it happens, I live in a country that allows heterosexual (and homosexual) civil partnerships and intend to take advantage of this civil status as soon as we sort out the paperwork.

Civil partnership makes sense to us as we don't have children, and we have very different financial statuses, so marriage would be unnecessarily binding to us at the moment (we haven't ruled it out for the future). Civil partnership allows us to have some of the benefits of marriage (e.g. a joint tax declaration) without the disavantages in case of separation (sharing out of all assets, for example).

Of course, if I was in a homosexual relationship, I think I would still be pissed off that I can only enter into this sort of Marriage Lite and not a full marriage.

I know that you dislike the idea of marriage (don't hold your breath to have a civil partnership. I know I've kept on about this but I can't seem them coming in for heterosexuals and I'm being genuine about this. In basic terms, civil partnerships are no different to civil marriages-so why have a new system?), but, really for a hundred quid or so, it is worth it if people are in it for life.

Most people- myself included- do not judge a couple's relationship on whether they are married or not. I like to think people are smarter than that. Being married is no guarantee of happiness nor does being unmarried mean a couple are unhappy and that is very true, but seeing it as a legal arrangement for those who are already committed can really be useful in blowing the cobwebs away about the issue.

Religion and all the rest of it are optional extras.

We had a fairly low key wedding, civil ceremony, as little fuss as possible etc. It was very nice. I just like the feeling of knowing we have made the commitment, I would not have wanted to have bought a house with DH or had children before marriage (we both come from fairly conventional families where pretty well everyone has married before having children etc so it seemed normal to us). I also like the fact that legally it makes things a lot simpler, next of kin, inheritance, etc. I do not feel it in any way goes against my feminist principles, I was not given away, didn't change name, we still have separate bank accounts etc. In response to the how long have you been married question I would tend to say 11 year but were together for 3 before that.

If you get married in a register office, the registrar will ask you which name you which to be known by in future; there is absolutely no legal requirement to change your name. I agree that the default option is that women still do- but there is no requirement to do so. Women do get the choice. The registrar won't, in the nicest possible way, care either way.
There are basic rules that must be followed when having a register office wedding-which as far as I can see is the 'least fuss' option- you must give notice, have an interview with the registrar to determine whether you are doing it of your own free will. This is absolutely required and there is a timeline of a few weeks to actually have the wedding.
I think it costs £30 each to give notice and £43.50 to actually get married.

Two witnesses must be present. There is no requirement to be 'given away', guests, food, a requirement of dress or even rings.
Nice as these things can be-and a lot of people understandably want a 'fuss'-there is no requirement for them.

Truly, it can be a very straightforward business.

JosieRosie I'm another been married for 20 years. One of the things that I think that being married gives us is a time-line, we can say that from X date we have been committed 100% to each other and have the piece of paper to prove it. I feel that is different from a rather more vague date (I couldnt tell you the date when we first dated or even the date when we first started living together).

The 'next-of-kin' issue is an important one. In the event of you or your partner being taken seriously ill you are not 'next-of-kin' to each other. Decisions could be made, information given but you are totally excluded.

You can spend as little or as much as you like on a wedding ceremony. At the end of the day it's the quality of the commitment that counts more than the quality of the cake.

The one I know had one of those surnames you would have been teased mercilessly for at school so he was probably just desperate to get rid of it!

So do I, WhoKnows - she was one of three sisters and was attached to her name and didn't want to see it die out. He didn't have strong feelings about his, so he changed.

Agree it's hard to discuss in real life. People don't like it when you seem to be criticising their choices. Though I expressed sorrow when one friend decided, under pressure, to change her name on marriage, and now that she's going through a messy divorce she remembered that conversation and told me I'd been right. Not much consolation in the circumstances!

I find it sad too, also the fact that most married women still use Mrs but it is very hard to discuss it in RL without causing offence. I do know one man who took his wife's surname on marriage, which is very unusual.

DH and I seriously thought about both changing our names to something else entirely, because I didn't want to change to his for feminist reasons and I actually don't particularly like mine as no-one can spell it, but we decided it was just too complicated to do (and would have upset lots of his relations).

Same here, kept my own name for all purposes (been married 11 years). Don't get many comments, just find that people constantly assume I changed it, I didn't make much of a thing about it at the start and wish I had told more people now as every year I get masses of birthday cards addressed to Mrs DHsurname despite me still using my own surname on email, FB, everything really, but feel a bit petty pointing it out after all these years. MIL knows perfectly well though and still does it, grrr.

I know quite a few married women who have hyphenated, some of their DHs have also hyphenated, some haven't, some have given their DCs the hyphenated name, some have given the DH surname, anything goes these days, but the default seems to be very much that the woman changes her name still.

JosieRosie, I haven't had many negative comments, though I have had the odd surprised one (mainly from older relatives). MIL hyphenates our names if she ever writes to me (she knows perfectly well that that isn't actually what I've done, but she can't quite get her head round my not having changed at all, and she's elderly so I'm not about to make a big thing of it).

And I think the way you dropped the civil partnerships bombshell half the way through the thread and not at the beginning is a trifle off.

JosieRosie, if you read between the lines, people here are effectively saying that there is no difference between civil partnerships and marriage, it is just that they are being more polite and diplomatic about disagreeing with you.

I think it is worth bearing in mind here that civil partnerships would be just as trapping (or untrapping) of women as marriage is.

Civil partnerships would still require a 'divorce' in order to get dissolve them.

A woman in an abusive civil partnership would still be subject to the same rules by the system as a married woman in an abusive relationship.

I think that the only difference is the name.