to not understand the benefits of getting married?

[RitaMorgan]

Putting aside the romantic and religious reasons or the big party/lots of presents (lovely as that would be).

What exactly are the benefits of legally being married over just cohabiting, for a woman with children?

DP very definitely doesn't want to get married, I would quite like a big party/lots of presents but am not sure if there is any point to it beyond that.

AIBU? Should I be insisting on a trip to the Register Office?

Baby, is kungfupanda right that NOK has no legal status (or is basically ignored by NHS ) and you can nominate anyone?

Pre-nups are not legally binding in England and Wales although I believe they are in Scotland.

' it is just a legal arrangement as you will find out of you have the misfortune to spllt up.

Although if you don't you will find marrying for love is a pretty cool thing

Is it still the case someone can only get widow's benefit if they are married, in the case of a sad loss?

it is just a legal arrangement as you will find out if you have the misfortune to split up

That may be so if you have no faith but for us the promises we made before God were worth far more than a piece of paper and were of much greater value. Our marriage and the blessing bestowed upon us was the most spiritual and meaningful moment of our lives and one that we have cherished and valued and felt dutybound to be true to.

The discussions we had with the priest who married us were also invaluable in both our married and spiritual journey.

Yes, it is the case that someone has to be married to receive widow's benefit; this is one aspect of the treatment of cohabiting couples that does make me feel things are unfair because, in all other benefits, they will be: 'treated as married'.

Well, why aren't they 'treated as married' when it comes to giving out widow's benefit, then? To my mind, any cohabitee who sees this as being unfair is absolutely right.

Wamster the treated as married bit ends with universal credit now anyway- for example if you don't work but your DH does, you still will not qualify as a 'working family'; reduced hours for carers and parents of under 12's but otherwise it is 2 35 hour jobs or no WTC.

And YY to widowes benefit worrying me- I can quite see a situation where a family's life has been turned down as being one when they may most be in need f help- traumatised children, grief, even the possibility that parents died in an accident or something when rest of family also injured and need to recover and have sick time off- and they get 'sorry, you did not sign the paper' ineligible'.

This was a bit of a discussion last saturday actually- is marriage just a pievce of paper as my mate wants to marry his BF but whilst they've been together 20 years, BF says it's just the proverbial paper: at the time I jked that yes it was a piece of aper with a very large bill on but I don't think it was, for us. We've had some really hard times and I can quite see that ahd I been able to just walk out I may well have done, facing the divorce and legal crap was daunting though and made me stick it through the worst times.