To ask genuinely, why people don't get married?

[Lookandlearn]

if they are in a committed, permanent relationship and have children? It's a genuine question and I am happy to be ignored if it's too mosey, but gives an airing to side issues from another thread on here.

NotaMopsa. Right so you actually think married and long-term cohabiting couples live differently to one another, then?
and it is NOT tosh that married women's non-financial contributions are taken into account .
And can you give me one good reason why I should give somebody money just because I have sex with them under the same roof?

Scotland has it wrong. I hope to goodness England has more sense.

If people are too dim too realise that in long-term relationships the day-to-day lives of couples are the same-married or not- it is not my fault. It is not my fault that they cannot see that marriage is a legal status only.

My relationship is not the business of the state - I don't want to enter into a state decreed contract and have aspects of my relationship bound by that.
I work f/t, earn more than DP, am not and never have been financially dependent on his input to our family partnership.
We own the house as tennants in commmon - my share of it is mine.
All other legal stuff can be settled by wills and other agreements which are actually about the mater you have a contract over - like the house - rather than about your relationship.
The whole notion of marriage feels odd to me. I don't like the terms 'husband' and 'wife'.
It just isn't me.

Wamster, I didn't married women were oppressed. I said they are part of an institution which has a history of oppression of women. Some people just don't want to live with that baggage.

I'm not saying longterm cohabitees and married people live differently. We don't. That's part of the reason I can't be bothered to get married: it would open up some major hornet's nests in the two families and it wouldn't change that much.

Though I agree with you about cohabitees' rights: they shouldn't be automatic.

A sense a recent name change....

Blu - Will and contracts are as much part of 'The State' as marriage is. If you want a relationship to be treated in a certain way by third parties and have this enforced by the state then you need to tell the state what your realtionship is and how you want it treated.

Marriage is a convenient way of doing this that meets many peoples needs.

RevoltingPeasent - That baggage only exists if you want it to.

But wamster, marriage isn't right for every long term cohabitating couple! Even if the way they live their day to day life with children/pets/mortgages is exactly the same as your average married couple, they may still not want to be treated as a legal and financial partnership for all sorts of reasons.

I don't think my relationship changed at all the day I married. We were committed beforehand and remained so.

However, as a lawyer, I would advise women to marry. It is a much easier position to find oneself in post bereavement, separation or divorce.
Co-habiting couples simply don,'t have the same legal protection in the UK.
And no amount of supposedly water tight contracts can make it so.

The only reasons I can see whereby you wouldn't want some legal protection for financial reasons is if you have no children or earn the same.

The other reason, that one of you is significantly better off than the other smacks of control/inequality.

The law in respect of co habiting partners has improved immeasurably but the protection offered falls way way short of that offered to married couples.

TheCoalition: My will as that of an unmarried person can be exactly as I want, and bears no relation to any default assumption or contract such as marriage is. If I were married, we would have entered a legal partnership in which all property was joint and we become automatic next of kin - even a pre-nup is not proven to over-ride the marriage contract that propety becomes joint. I could make a choice about whether my half of the marital whole went straight to DS or else to my DH, I suppose, but that would take an extra contract in order to over-ride the marriage partnerhsip.

So, we have made contracts which pertain to our house ownership, to our property in the event of death, and other things - none of them being what they would be basd on a marriage contract.

Wordfactory - as a woman who earns more than her DH, and has a greater share of equity in our house, knowing that with the provision we have made for various insurances, pensions and property either of us would be able to scrape by about equally in the event of the death of the other - what is the advantage fo me in getting married?

What happens most often? The early death of a partner, during working / childrearing years , or the collapse of a marriage ?

My guess is marriage collapse. If DP leaves, I'm damned if he's taking more than a fair share of the house, which marriage would allow. (we have both taken equal responsibility for work and childcare in our partnership)

Blu - interesting that you refer to him as your DH.

wordfactory I don't think the law has changed much in the last 20 or so years regarding cohabiting partners (although I do appreciate that provision for children has changed in that they are provided for regardless of parental status- as it should be).
The reason any protection falls short is simple: the law cannot assume for the couple what their legal rights should be as regards a cohabiting partner.
It may seem progressive to make cohabitation and marriage the same in law, but it would actually be taking away the rights for cohabitees to arrange their own affairs as they wish.
It would also create much confusion because nobody would really know when any rights kicked in, and, of course, be an abuse of the human right to a private adult relationship free of state interference.

Jogon - that was an absolute typo - and not a freudian slip, either! I garbeld up two ways of putting my pov forward and was thinking 'as a DH it would be like this, and as a DP it would be like that'

Chaotic stream of consciousness and not previewing.

I have no axe to grind, other people getting married, fine. I'm fine with not getting married!

Blu - That's all fine, but it's not making your relationship none of the states business.

Wamster. Why do you CARE (and you clearly do care, very deeply!), if people would rather "jump through hoops" to attain the same legal rights as married people? What skin is it off your nose?

It really did not put me out at all to:
a) Make a will (would have done it anyway)
b) Make my partner and I joint tenants of house (would have done it anyway)
c) Have him present to register baby and thus have joint parental responsibility (would have done it anyway)
d) Tick the boxes on benefit/private pension/life insurance forms to make sure we each were covered in the event of death.

(And btw, if we split up, he would have to contribute to dd's upbringing as he's her dad; I would ask for no more money as I have independent means; and we'd both get equal share of the house)

These things took little time and hassle- in fact, none!

Why does it bother you so much that I did not go to a registry office to get married and sort this stuff out instead? It would have been MORE hassle, if anything.

And I have to be blunt with you. My parents are divorced. My partner's parents are divorced. ALL of the family friends we grew up with are divorced. I know couples in their twenties who divorced within two years of marriage. They all made the vows. They all broke them. Their relationships were no more permanent or guaranteed than a couple who don't wed.

So for me, in my world, marriage has come to mean... nothing, really. I don't expect it to mean nothing to other people. Evidently for millions it means a great deal. But it means nothing much to me (other than the chance to have a fab party, which I still might take!). So why the hell should I do it?

This is clearly an emotional issue for you, however you couch it in technicalities. You've been fairly offensive to people who choose, at no detriment to anyone else, not to get married. Smug, ridiculous etc etc.... But why does it enrage you so?

If you receive benefits or tax credits they are linked to your relationship status. So the State IS involved. it is anyway, in a million different ways. it's absurd to think you can live outside of the State. Like all the anarchists I knew at uni who ran off to sign on every week. Hilarious. Be an anarchist and hate the state as much as you like but you can fuck off taking my taxes for it.

ShushBaby OK, I accept that you are a responsible person who has taken steps to protect their interests, but thousands are not taking these (sensible) steps and are just living together with no thought of what should happen if things go wrong.
Because of their carefree attitude, there is now talk of giving cohabitees certain rights in relation to each other, I think this is wrong; firstly, because these rights are available to people already in two separate ways:
marriage OR sorting it out privately and, secondly, although I agree with Jogon that people cannot live outside the state entirely, I don't think having a sexual relationship with another adult under the same roof is valid reason to give them financial recompense (and, I'm sorry but a lot of cohabitees do decry marriage then ask for cohabitee rights. I appreciate you're not one of them). Obviously if proper agreements have been made legally it is different.

I've been divorced once (this is why I have maintained throughout this thread that emotionally marriage changes little between a couple) and perhaps would one day have a relationship where I live with someone but I'd like this to be on my own terms and not be threatened with legal action should things go wrong.
Thanks to the lurking prospect of cohabitee rights, I may not be able to do this anymore.
It is because I respect cohabitation and its freedoms that I think that people who are committed for life should get married as it frees cohabitation up for those who don't want the hassle of going to court if things go wrong.
Yet again, I appreciate you are sensible and have taken the right legal actions for you, thousands do not.

So your argument is "some shortsighted/ill-informed unmarried couples are spoiling it for the rest of us"?

That is part of it. Yes this may be selfish of me but at least I'm not trying to argue that marriage is better than cohabitation like a lot of people do. I'm under no illusion that marriage equals lifelong happiness.
I also do not understand the reluctance- other than a calculated decision to keep financial affairs separate- by some to marry when it is tailor-made for long-term, cohabiting relationships that involve the bringing up of children.
Commitment does not come from marriage; marriage is the logical next step for those that are already committed.

A friend of mine is shacked up with a complete waster chap twenty years younger than her who has never done a days work in his life.

She is not in love with him nor him her but it is a mutual relationship where she has company and sex and he has a roof and pocket money.

If she thought he would have the rights of a wife or husband, she'd kick him out. Which is what neither of them wants.

Coalition - well, I thnk it does.
The cntracts i have entered into are of course within what is legal within the law of the land - the state. But they are based on the details of that transaction between us, focussed in the house / the child, whatever, not the nature of the relationship as a whole (married / unmarried) .
Once married (in the eyes of the state, in a ceremony decreed and approved as legal by the state) we are regarded by the state as a certain legal entity and all other legal contracts pertain to that - the nature of the relationship.