Advised to get married whilst doing wills

[mustytrusty]

Went to a solicitor with DP today to arrange our wills. We have mortgage, two dc's and been together 23 years. Have been advised that for tax reasons we should think about getting married.

I have no desire to be married. Not to him or anyone else, and I never have wanted to be.

Does anyone know if there's a campaign to make the tax situation for long-term couples
mirror that of married couples?

Boggles my mind that in this day and age unmarried couples can be treated differently than married.

Yes a member of my family got married after a experience in a foreign hospital. Her partner became unwell and was unconscious in hospital, the doctors wouldn't tell her anything or take information/instruction from her. They phoned his parents and she then had to find out what was going on from them (luckily they had a good relationship and were cooperative)

Yes you are. You can name whoever you want as your next of kin. I have named my DS as my next of kin. However they can't make life or death decisions for you unless they have power of attorney. So much outdated nonsense on mumsnet.

This is an excellent idea for managing health and financial issues while both partners are alive, but it will not get OP round the IHT issues. The only way to get the IHT exemption is be married or in a civil partnership.

You can’t have a legal arrangement around property and inheritance without clarifying when it applies and when it doesn’t. Some people will choose not to do so and they need a way of making that choice active too. As it stands marriage is one way of making a legal choice. Civil partnership is another. People who choose not to do those things have chosen not to conjoin their affairs and that needs to be an option on the table too. If you want everything the same (when? How do you know when it kicks in? What if someone stays with you for 2 weeks? A year? 20 years? 20 years but youve never had sex? A year but youve had a baby and stopped working?) then you take rights away from those people.

If you own a property in the south east inheritance tax could kick in if you don’t get married / do a civil partnership. The point is not just for each other but the surviving partner gets two lots of exemptions for the sake of their heirs. If you don’t have that kind of estate, don’t worry

Outdated? Not at all. Marriage is the solid way of doing this.your solutions can be contested by the legal next of kin.If you are unmarried and your ds is your oldest child then he is automatically your next of kin. If he is a minor then an adult will have the role. He can’t decide on your welfare - that will be the next adult member of your family. Do you know this person?

I would die on the hill that unmarried couples should not have the same rights and tax implications of married couples.

If you want the benefits, then you enter into the legal contract to get them. If you don’t want them, or don’t want to enter the contract, then you don’t - that’s also a valid choice.

No one should accidentally find themselves falling into a contract equivalent to marriage without making an explicit choice to do so.

If you’re suggesting that there might be a way for a long standing couple to choose to have these tax reliefs, then that already exists - it’s marriage.

ok My my point is that you have to opt in! Not the exact example. You don’t want people gaining rights over other’s property without their knowledge and that what the inheritance rights through marriage are.

Cohabitation agreement won’t give you any tax benefits though.

The requirement for marriage for tax reliefs is actually a really important barrier to tax evasion. If there wasn’t a requirement to be married I could say I’m in a relationship with the person I’m selling my rental property to and pay no tax. Then that I’m in a relationship with my neighbour (or my daughter’s long term partner) to give them an inheritance tax free when I die.

I'm from a country which has a common-law partner concept and it's extremely woolly and causes concern for people who don't necessarily see the person they've shacked up with for a couple years as their lifetime partner on a par with marriage.

There's a very legally indistinct set of criteria that taken as a whole are used to determine if you have a "serious" relationship, including length of relationship but also if they live in your house and have a toothbrush there and how often they stay over but what if you have a kid and your partner doesn't stay often but it's because he works as a fly-in-fly-out worker on an oil rig... blah blah blah. And then people get complacent because they're "sure" the government will see it their way down the line and end up in trouble when it's not the case, or they memorise simple rules like "anything over 2 years" but not all the various exceptions in either direction.

(I understand there is something similar here with e.g. UC benefits claims)

I much prefer the British system for marriage of having a very clear legal contract. Everyone knows where they stand.

As others have said you have the option to opt in to the tax breaks through a very simple contract which can be drawn up for you and legally witnessed easily and cheaply in a town near you. If marriage feels too loaded a word look at a civil partnership. You don't need to tell anyone at all. It's just a piece of paper, but in the same way a ten pound note or deeds on a property is a piece of paper.

On a tangent, personally I think that marriage should be completely uncoupled from love and babies and religion and should just become a civil partnership. Nothing to stop you "marrying" the person you're exclusively shagging, but make it so that asexual people or those who live co-dependently with a sibling or single mums who raise their kids communally still have the option of the financial protection for any one other person at a time.

What if people in long term relationships don't want those things to apply? Would they have to opt out? Having the choice to marry/get a civil partnership is the only thing that actually makes sense.

It's because married couples have made a legal commitment to be with one another and it's much harder to untangle than "just" the mortgage and kids.

You can do whatever you want, feel however you want about it, but at the end of the day these are the laws and the way the system works. You want to benefit from the system, you play by the systems rules 🤷.

Or, you find a way to change them all and hope the system doesn't bite you in the bum while you're doing so.

Absolutely bonkers you think non-married people should have the same rights as married people. You said having shared children trumps marriage. Would you want someone you had a one night stand resulting in a baby to have access to your pension and home?

That just-a-piecce-of-paper bullshit line is trotted out on mumsnet all the time. Then someone’s partner leaves them and it’s nobody-ever-taught-us-marriage-gives-legal-rights.

marriage is a LEGAL ceremony. The piece of paper is a LEGAL document. Have some counselling and grow up.

Nothing to stop the ace or two single mums having a civil partnership now, as long as they aren't closely related. (Although if things go sour, presumably one partner might be able to seek annulment on the grounds of nonconsummation. Lord knows how that discussion would go in a f/f relationship.) Marriages of convenience are as old as marriage, and you can have them with any adult you aren't a close genetic relative of.

You’re confusing wedding (white dress, party, public declaration of commitment) with marriage (legal contract).

As far as the kids and mortgage go, those things are covered anyway. But as you have no contract regarding your tax affairs (ie you’ll pay IHT) why do you think your assumed commitment to the relationship exempts you?

Don’t forget the change in the law on pensions that is coming in. Once a pension pot is taken into account, that plus the house makes it likely that even people who don’t think of themselves as being well off will end up paying inheritance tax.

The non-consummation ground for annulment doesn’t apply for same sex couples.

"Does anyone know if there's a campaign to make the tax situation for long-term couples
mirror that of married couples?
Boggles my mind that in this day and age unmarried couples can be treated differently than married."

Boggles my mind that some people think they should have the same rights as married (or civil partnered) couples without just... getting married.

Thanks 😀good to know. That makes sense, because the idea of the legal discussions that would result is both awful and hilarious.

Well, a house deed is a "piece of paper". A mortgage is a "piece of paper". A birth certificate naming both parents is a "piece of paper".

Boils my piss when people dismiss marriage as being "just a piece of paper". Not it isn't. It's a legal commitment providing certain legal protections - and tax benefits.

Because as with the hundreds of posts on Mumsnet, relationships are extremely complicated and someone can have a mortgage, children and long term relationship but not want their partner to inherit their estate.

Yes the same can be said for marriages and civil partnerships but at some point a line needs to be drawn before assumption passes over to written contract. This is a reasonable line.

Useful to hear about this.

There's nothing wrong with other opt in models like civil partnership and the pacte civil, albeit people should know there isn't the global recognition (and tbf maybe some of them prefer it that way). But any kind of de facto opens up this kind of problem.

I'm not very keen on spaffing limited state resources on investigating the inevitable borderline cases if we bring in de facto for IHT purposes. It takes up enough for benefits claim, and that's something where it is actually necessary. People who have sufficient resources to incur IHT but haven't availed themselves of either of the official formalisation options whilst simultaneously fucking over people who've made considered decisions should not be a priority.

I didn't realise that about non-consummation not being grounds for annulment in a same sex marriage! That's good to know. I do think you should be able to get this particular exclusive economic contract, mirroring the rights and responsibilities of marriage, between any two people though - leave the sex out of it entirely! But as I say - complete tangent!

Glad this has given you food for thought OP, and that you've got a couple of "opt-in" options to explore with your partner that might work for you within the current laws. Good luck!

Get a civil partnership then as pp have suggested.
This isn’t just about you - it’s about your children and family security too.

When a friend’s partner died suddenly and unexpectedly her family wanted the value of her half of the house. But it wasn’t the money that really hurt. He was excluded from funeral planning and had no say in the words of her gravestone.
You are both getting older.

Either of you could become ill.
There’s a definite reason increase in younger people developing various cancers especially bowel cancer, we’ve had some really sad cases at work. And a consequent increase in death bed marriages.

Forget your principles and do the sensible thing to protect yourself and your partner’s interests as well as your children.

Just do the civil ceremony and have a nice meal out and then forget about it.