For not seeing a true reason to get married

[anykey]

Before I start! Long time reader, first time poster!

In my eyes, marriage is just a bit of paper. If you love someone enough why should getting married actually matter? Does it suggest I love that person more if we are married? Or simply harder to get away if times are hard? Is it a promise that we will stay together through thick and thin or is it a promise that if I stop loving you I will try harder to make it work because we are married? I feel I am from a younger generation which has seen people marry just for financial security, or for religion. (Pre-arranged etc) or maybe because that's "what you do" grow up, get married, have kids and live happily ever after.
I love my partner an have been together for a good few years now but i feel this could put pressure on the relationship in the future!

I've been reading these forums for a while now and have seen that other people's POV can help out. Am I alone with my views or are there others out there who feel the same?

Please ignore my a). I was getting CGT mixed up with IHT. As a result I was talking cobblers!

Well 30 years together is pretty committed to me.

Have you read the relationship threads on here? lots of commitment from married couples on there...

IME, those people who 'don't think marriage is that important' don't really feel that committed to their current partner.

No, no, no, ami - this view is only for those who believe that marriage = greater commitment! There are plenty of us out here who would refute that.

Amicissima

I am committed and married and I think your comment about unmarieds lacking commitment is utter nonsense.

I am married and disagree with amicissimma too. DH and I were together for 10 years before we got married, and went through a lot together, and we didn't magically become more 'committed' when we signed the register .

There are so many myths about common-law partnerships and ignorance about the lack of unmarried partners rights that I really think that the information in this thread should be saved somewhere permanent.

Technically DH and I became more committed when we got married, but only in the financial sense.

21 years i feel pretty committed

It's not about more or less committed, it's about a private commitment versus a public commitment.

When DH and I were together before we married, we gradually became more and more committed to each other.

Our commitment was our business. It was private.

At a certain point we wanted to make a public commitment - to put our relationship on the record. So we got married, because that's what marriage is - a publicly acknowledged domestic partnership.

For many people making a public, legal commitment to another person is a further level of commitment than a private understanding.

But the point of a private understanding is just that - it's between the two if you. It's nobody else's business how committed you are, because you have chosen not to formalise it.

I never felt the need to publicly announce my commitment to my DP.

I have no problem with people that want to get married. It's just not for me.

"IME, those people who 'don't think marriage is that important' don't really feel that committed to their current partner. I'm sure there's the occasional exception to that, but I've yet to meet it in RL"

Probably a good reason not to get married then!

I would have thought a good number of people who don't want to get married may have been married before and are making an informed choice.

I felt different when I got married, which I was unprepared for, having lived with my husband and having had a child. Getting married has a great deal of symbolic meaning to me - it's a public and legal statement of intent.

Of course, it doesn't guarantee faithfulness or loyalty or kindness - I think perhaps that, legalities aside, it only has the level of importance that each partner gives it (in an emotional sense), iyswim.

I do think that a sahp would be mad to not get the legal protection tbh. You cannot absolutely guarantee that someone will love you forever, but everyone should take steps to give themselves whatever legal protection they can.

I'm still not clear on what this "legal protection for the sahp" actually is, though. If DP were to up and leave me, as I said earlier, I'd be entitled to half the profits from our house after the mortgage is paid off, as the house is in joint names; I would have a good legal case to make a claim on his pension, and obviously I'd be able to claim maintenance. If he were to die, I've been named on his work contract as his next of kin so would receive a lump sum of 3 times his salary, enabling me to pay off the mortgage. What more "legal protection" would being married actually afford me, in either of these cases? (I'm not being flippant here, I am really trying to pin down facts.)

And obviously I'm in a much better position than if we were married with regard to him trying to get custody of the children if we split up (this is all completely hypothetical; have no intention of splitting!)

I love being married and love my dh as much now as the day we met (couldn't stand him then either).

We celebrated 20 years last year and have 3 dc aged 21, 18 and 9.
I don't think you need a clear reason to get married, except for love.

It may make more sense financially and legally but if you are both in it for the long term, the latter isn't an issue.

FWIW we lived together for 4 years and after many attempts at jokingly asking each other to marry, we decided to.
He said "shall we get married love as it will save us money on tax" How romantic eh?

Despite being skint, the various ups and downs highs and lows, I have never regretted it and remain in love.

He however hates me, has several bits on the side, and totally regrets it. (Just kidding).

substitute, I am not sure that you could claim maintenance. You would be able to get child support, but I don't think you could get spousal maintenance, because you are not his spouse. I also think that you would maybe have to fight harder to get pension rights than if you were married, in which case your right to these things would be automatic.

In some cases life insurance/benefits from work can be paid to a partner, but in some jobs they only go to a spouse.

Depending on wealth, there are also inheritance tax issues.

In your individual case, maybe you are covered financially even though you are not married, but for many people marriage does smooth the way, financially, if someone dies or if the couple split up.

substitute - like karma says, you would not be able to claim spousal maintenance - your DP has no responsibility to support you, whereas spousal maintenance is part of the divorce settlement. Nor do I believe you have any rights over his pension.

Willing to be corrected though.

For me, the main driver for getting married was for the legal protection it offered.

1. DH has substantially more assets than I do and if he were to die, we wanted them to pass to me free of IHT (or to route them through me for life and then to our DC). If we weren't married and DH died, I would have had to sell the family home and downsize quite substantially.

2. I have scaled back a good career to have DC. Financially, we don't need me to work but I have chosen to do part time as I don't believe two parents can have stressful full time jobs without it impacting on family life. My earning potential has reduced as a result of this decision. I wanted some protection through a divorce settlement if we ever to break up. That wouldn't have been available if we were merely cohabiting.

That aside, I do love being married and feel we are a stronger family unit as a result.

Yep, if you just live together as a SAHP, you have no claim on his income after you spilt up, no claim on his savings, no claim on his pension - other than child support, but if you are married, you (as well as your DCs) have a claim, not just on support, but on everything.

I think a good case recently is the one of Nancy DeLell'olio, she tried to stay in the flat Sven GE had bought 'for her' and get a financial settlement he'd promised her and got nothing but an eviction notice. So many woman really think they have a claim on assets even if they aren't married get a bad shock how much worse off they are if they split when they are not.

That's not to say you should get married if you don't want too, but just don't be so foolish as to give up your income to be a SAHM (or even go part time/stop pushing your own career goals in order to do more childcare) on the assumption your DP will continue to support you - if they change their mind, they are under no obligation to you if they haven't married you.

Of course it works the other way, if you don't marry, you don't have to worry about your DH taking any of your assets/family assets. Still, as the bulk of childcare falls to woman, it's woman who's careers and earning potential are more typically damaged by the decision to start a family

"IME, those people who 'don't think marriage is that important' don't really feel that committed to their current partner."

Agree... well ish. I think in general people who are married are more committed than people who aren't, statistics on break ups show this. But, I think a lot of this is down to the fact that you can't measure how the unmarried feel/intend about their relationships so living together includes a much broader spectrum.

I have lived with people before that I would not have married, even though I may have loved them, I just didn't see it as a forever thing, it was just fun at the time. I think even having children doesn't always prove commitment because sadly so many people have children willy nilly or accidentally. Before somebody says, I know their must be loads of married people who don't feel committed, I just don't think there are as many.

This is why I would be against automatic rights being granted to couples after x number of years living together. People should have to sign something stating their intentions within a relationship (not just get married) the state should not have to guess.

Maybe we should have some sort of state sanctioned cohabitation agreement that couples could sign if they wanted, giving ALL of the rights that go with marriage without being called married. It would be interesting to see how many couples would do this, if available.