AIBU to think if you want marital rights then you should get married?

[KitKat1985]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42134722

According to this BBC article, 2/3rds of cohabiting couples wrongly believe 'common-law marriage' laws exist when dividing up finances, and there are calls now to introduce some form of legal financial protection for 'common-law marriages'. AIBU to not get this? Surely if people choose not to get married (or have a civil partnership for same sex couples) then they do so knowing that they don't have the same legal protection as married couples. It was one of the reasons me and DH decided to get married after co-habiting for a couple of years. Surely if you choose not to take on the legal and financial commitments of getting married, then you can't expect to have the same rights if you break up / your partner passes away? And surely for some couples the whole reason they don't want to get married is so they can just walk away from things if the relationship fails, without having to have the legal and financial complications involved in getting divorced? Is it really fair to then force those people to have to support their partner if they break up even if they actively choose never to make that commitment in the first place?

Sorry X posted.

Sorry, I have only skimmed through this thread so apologise if this has already been said. What happens if one person wants to get married but the other doesn't ? In the case of it being a woman who has kids with her partner, surely it's only fair that she has the same rights as a married woman. Or how the hell could she cope. The children of this partnership should not suffer because their Father would not marry his partner. There is still a lot of ignorance out there as far as civil partnerships are concerned. Not everyone is educated to the level of many on this thread.I agree in principle with the OP but human relationships are far more complicated for one stock answer.
BTW what the hell has Brexit got to do with this thread. Get over it, we are leaving. I was a remain voter.

Little Kiwi,.....I was with you until you mentioned Brexit.

Pen yes your point has been made repeatly on the thread and the responses to your point are numerous.

In the case of it being a woman who has kids with her partner, surely it's only fair that she has the same rights as a married woman. Or how the hell could she cope.

Very good point. I think that scenario is common TBH.

Thanks lizzieziddal. Just read through a few.

Battleax....yeah I suspect it's very very common. We still have a long way to go to get these absent Fathers to take responsibility for their kids. In my first marriage, yes I was married, he took no responsibility whatsoever for his children, during and after the marriage ended. He got away with it, so what difference does it make whether your married or not ? There should be much stronger laws to make men pay up regardless of if they are married or not if they have kids. If there are no kids, well thats totally different and you should not have the same rights as being married IMHO because you are perfectly capable of moving on.

What happens if one person wants to get married but the other doesn't ? In the case of it being a woman who has kids with her partner, surely it's only fair that she has the same rights as a married woman. Or how the hell could she cope. The children of this partnership should not suffer because their Father would not marry his partner.

It is common. I think that's a sign of how difficult it is for women to be assertive and for people to talk about practical stuff without feeling that it spoils the romantic, lovey dovey side of a relationship.

It's all very well for the educated, confident women posting on this thread who earn as much as their partners, or more. They and their children will be all right financially if the parents split up. But most women earn less than their partners, certainly during the years when their children are young. If they had the knowledge and the confidence (and the family and society backing) to insist that they had some sort of financial protection before having children, e.g. marriage, these irresponsible men who won't look after their loved ones properly given half a chance would get away with it a lot less often.

In the case of it being a woman who has kids with her partner, surely it's only fair that she has the same rights as a married woman. Or how the hell could she cope.

Why should the other partner be forced to accept they are ‘married’ by the state when they don’t want to be, possibly for very understandable reasons. The answer is for women to take responsibility and not settle down and have a family with a man who isn’t willing to make that commitment.

Marriage isn’t perfect, and I’d be happy for other civil partnership arrangements to exist alongside it, but these would be opt in arrangements. I also agree that the father of children should be held more accountable than they currently are, with sanctions increased (including prison if necessary) for failure to properly provide support. Outside marriage, if a relationship breaks down they should have responsibility for their children, not their former partner to whom they never agreed to commit.

*On a preponderance of evidence like most civil law. Have you even read anything about it? The link I posted? Anything?+

This is my point. Yes, a body of law exists to govern the status of relationship, with evidence required to assess compliance with its strictures, and case law developed where the statute requires clarification. As with any such legislation and associated case law, it remains open to interpretation that requires expert legal advice to navigate through. This is a far more uncertain, complex and potentially confusing position than the straightforward binary married/unmarried distinction in the U.K.

The point is to protect more CHILDREN coconut, who don't get the chance to "opt in" but are massively disadvantaged by family breakdown.

It's not complicated.

A marriage built on just contracts and security is what is wrong with the world. Romance is dead.

Marriage has always been about the contract Nat. Romance has fallen in and out of fashion over the centuries and wasn't always associated with marriage anyway, no matter what Sinatra said.

Yes, marriage is a contract and always has been, and usually the wife came with a dowry. some women had their teeth removed to lower the costs to her husband when taking care of her

It's not so long ago that 'bottom drawers' were in abundance - not a porn term but somethings to put away for the day you get married.

I see nothing romantic about a wedding present list. Or asking for money for the honeymoon.

I agree with she sparkles. Totally. Get married for the contract but then where does the love come. Me, personally , wouldn't get married again, too much hassle, but maybe you can go to a solicitors for a drawn up contract between both partners, without it sounding contrite. Just get a contract drawn up between yourselves who gets what and when. protection.

The answer is for women to take responsibility and not settle down and have a family with a man who isn’t willing to make that commitment.

You're operating from the assumption that all women are equally empowered. To me your argument sounds like those Americans who say that women should just keep their legs closed rather than expect access to contraception or abortion. Or those people who look on a DV relationship and ask "why doesn't she leave him?"

Get married for the contract but then where does the love come.

Charming.

I'm damned if I'm going to sit here and argue for other women's rights, just to dodge return fire. How incredibly catty.

A few of you (on both sides) need to live and let live and stop denigrating each other's choices.

Marriage is a contract and comes with expectancies for the protection.
If you don't want this then you can't moan when it goes tits up and you aren't protected.
If I am not protected with insurance and have an accident/ house burns down etc etc, It's my own fault for not being protected, nobody elses.

It needn't cost anymore than the certificate, you can write your own vows if you don't like the traditional ones, it doesn't even have to be religious.

I agree with she sparkles. Totally. Get married for the contract but then where does the love come. Me, personally , wouldn't get married again, too much hassle, but maybe you can go to a solicitors for a drawn up contract between both partners, without it sounding contrite. Just get a contract drawn up between yourselves who gets what and when. protection.

You can do exactly that. You can go into a lawyers today and draw up a cohabitation agreement. That already exists. You just can't get the tax benefits accorded to those in a legal partnership.

I'd just like to add that love and romance never paid for heating, electricity, education, food, healthcare or pretty much anything else.

who would marry somebody they don't love?
Surely the love comes first and the marriage is the contract.
It's not too long ago that a woman would leave the relationship if the man didn't want to get married.
It was frowned upon to have children out of wedlock, because the man obviously wasn't willing to commit.
I think marriage has a lot going for it.
But there again I would as we celebrated our silver wedding anniversary in August.

Marriage is a contract and comes with expectancies for the protection.
If you don't want this then you can't moan when it goes tits up and you aren't protected.
If I am not protected with insurance and have an accident/ house burns down etc etc, It's my own fault for not being protected, nobody elses.

So, you're happy with your state-sanctioned planned dependence and everybody else can go hang?

I find it faintly horrifying that adult women can think of their partners as just a guaranteed roof over their head. It's almost an employer-employee relationship when you reduce these things to a contractual formality. Do women genuinely think like that when they get married? It almost makes me feel sorry for men.

I find it faintly horrifying that adult women can think of their partners as just a guaranteed roof over their head. It's almost an employer-employee relationship when you reduce these things to a contractual formality. Do women genuinely think like that when they get married? It almost makes me feel sorry for men.

We were together for 12 years before we got married. Until that point we wanted to keep assets separate because there was no mutual financial dependency on each other. That's why we hadn't also signed a cohabitation agreement. For us the reason to formalise that partnership legally was for financial reasons in order to start a family. (As it turns out we're infertile and can't have children, but we wouldn't have considered TTC without having a legal arrangement first)

Our relationship was no more or less valid before our wedding than after. But it was different in the eyes of the law and the rights and responsibilities that came with that.

BTW I am the higher earner and the plan would have been for DH to be a SAHD. So protection would have been for him in the event of a relationship breakdown - it's not just a men / women issue. It's just financial sense as far as we're concerned.

I agree, genever.

Scenario 1: Jane marries Paul. They both earn a lot of money. They have a child together. Jane takes a short period of maternity leave. Paul pays an increased share of the bills while her income is down. When she goes back to work they go back to 50/50 split on all bills, now including childcare. They split up when their child is 3. The marital assets are shared 50/50 which is roughly in line with what each has put in.

All very equitable, but few women in the UK are in Jane's position.

Scenario 2: Alison moves in with Dave. They earn about the same. He already owns his own flat. She contributes to the bills but her name is not on the deeds. They have a child. They both agree Alison will take a career break until the child is at school. During this time Dave pays for everything, but because he has Alison at home looking after the house as well as the child he can concentrate on his career and gets several promotions. When the child is 5, Alison goes back to work part-time in a low-paid but local and family friendly job. She pays what she can towards the bills, but Dave is paying the lion's share. They split up when their child is 10. Alison and the child move out. She is entitled to absolutely nothing from the family assets. Dave pays some child support but life is a struggle for Alison now, financially. Dave continues to do well. Alison has no claim on the pension provision he has been building up during their years together.

It doesn't seem to me that if Alison had insisted on marriage before having a child with Dave that she'd have been doing that just to get a guaranteed roof over her head. She'd just have been doing some common sense planning against the possibility that the relationship might fail, as so many do. She and her child would also have been protected if Dave died.

Change my example round if you like and make Alison into Adam and Dave into Diane. This would be rare in the UK but Adam and Diane would be just as well advised as Alison and Dave to consider getting married to protect Adam's position.