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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

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

647 replies

KitKat1985 · 27/11/2017 13:07

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?

OP posts:

leftbehind · 27/11/2017 15:17

all the hassle of signing paperwork and reading through documents in order to get the same or almost the same legal rights as a married couple does make me wonder why the fuck they don’t just get married. Getting married can be a quick straightforward non flowery legal ceremony with no mention of God or anything. It’s quick, painless and all about the legalities. Why people are so averse to that, whilst stating they want all the legal and financial protections and are happy to visit their solicitor for a longer period of time than a wedding ceremony to get their wills/finances in order, is beyond me. Just do the wedding, it’s quicker and easier and ticks every box!

Because some people really don't want to "be married" and object to being told that such legal rights and protections are only available if you're prepared to have your relationship recognised as "a marriage".

Autumnskiesarelovely · 27/11/2017 15:18

I think kids lose out if a parent neglects their obligations just because they are not married. So there is a need to tighten up things legally.

I also feel this because I trusted my partner when he said he just needed a bit more time tying up issues in his divorce before we married. I moved in on that trust, we had a baby plannned but early, then he reneged on his promise. Child is special needs and I’m not on the mortgage. We are separating yet I am effectively without a home or that much maintenance. Yes of course I do wish I’d married first and not trusted my partner. My child doesn’t deserve to pay that price though.

papayasareyum · 27/11/2017 15:19

it’s a word. People need to move away from the notion that it’s a biblical contract where a man owns his wife. It isn’t. Not any more anyway. I hope people aren’t seriously avoiding marriage but staying in long term relationships because they’re worried about the symbolism a word infers??!

KERALA1 · 27/11/2017 15:20

Its very hard in some cases impossible (eg inheritance tax) to replicate the benefits of marriage without actually getting married. Wills can be changed at the drop of a hat. You can go to the solicitors next door to the one you went to yesterday with your partner to make your "joint wills" and change your will. Partner wouldn't know a thing. You can sever a joint tenancy by filling in a form.

Fine not to get married no one much cares or thinks they are "better" . But my advice to my dds is it is madness to restrict or limit your earning potential in any way unless you are married. If you are both 50 / 50 or you have a private income no issue.

StinkPickle · 27/11/2017 15:22

I completely agree.

The rights that people want already exist in marriage.

They don’t need to introduce rights for co habiting people. It’s njce to have the option to co habit WITHOUT any of the legal seriousness.

PoorYorick · 27/11/2017 15:23

I respect that people feel this way but I cannot for the life of me understand it. "I don't want my relationship to be recognised as a marriage but I want it to have legal and financial protections. You know, like the ones that define a relationship as being a marriage."

Again, totally respect your feelings but can't understand them. Not in the slightest.

KERALA1 · 27/11/2017 15:30

No Yorick I don't get it either. Its a hell of a price to pay for a notion thats for sure.

Clients with larger estates who realise how whacked they will be for IHT as unmarried individuals swiftly seem to get over their squeamishness rightly or wrongly saving their kids hundreds of thousands of pounds in tax focuses the minds of the over 60s...

PoorYorick · 27/11/2017 15:32

It really sounds to me as though a lot of people just don't like the words 'marriage' or 'wife' and what they imagine they imply.

VioletHaze · 27/11/2017 15:34

I actually agree entirely that there should be some kind of alternative to marriage for heterosexual couples without the baggage of marriage. Honestly, I’d personally go further and say that in my ideal world, all religious ‘marriage’ ceremonies would be purely spiritual, with no legally binding powers, and all the legal bits should come with a civil partnership which is open to any two unrelated adults. Separate out the two entirely.

I also agree that child maintenance needs sorted out as our current system is woefully inadequate.

However, that’s not what I thought this post was about. It was about the fact that huge numbers of people are under the impression that ‘common law’ marriage exists and gives them certain protections and whether those people should, in fact, be given those protections by virtue of living together for X amount of time. That is the bit I don’t agree with. You can’t just commit to sharing all your worldly goods, your pension, your savings, your inheritance – the lot – by default. That has to be a proper proactive decision and if you don’t make it, that’s your choice too.

PoorYorick · 27/11/2017 15:36

I actually agree entirely that there should be some kind of alternative to marriage for heterosexual couples without the baggage of marriage.

What would you keep and what would you lose?

Love51 · 27/11/2017 15:39

I hate the idea of someone else / the law being able to deem that I am 'as married'. I am actually married, and it's a decision I / we made, consciously and on purpose. If he died I wouldn't want someone else I moved in deemed my husband / wife- if I want another spouse, I'll marry them. Don't want them to become my spouse kind of by accident.

NotWeavingButDarning · 27/11/2017 15:40

I am very happy to not be married to my partner and would be really, severely annoyed if, merely by living together, he suddenly had rights to my assets.

We both earn roughly the same, but I am far better with money than he is. I own the house outright and have savings and I want all of my assets passed on to my (still young) children, not to him.

Sprogletsmuvva · 27/11/2017 15:49

Interestingly, apparently gay civil partnerships don’t provide for dissolution on grounds of infidelity and gay marriage just carries over the provisions of heterosexual - ie has to be adultery with an opp-sex partner, (deliberately) making it pretty redundant. Apparently this was on the basis of some of the more vocal gay rights types, who claimed that gay men don’t prize faithfulness in the same way straights do.

So there is precedent for an arrangement that would allow cohabitees not to have to sign up to monogamy, if this freedom is important to them.

PoorYorick · 27/11/2017 15:53

Not entirely....not all same sex marriages are between gay people, one or both partners could be bi (which is why 'same sex' is the correct term).

leftbehind · 27/11/2017 15:54

I would like us to have IHT relief yorick but we can't unless we get married because we are barred from having a civil partnership. As I understsnd it, IHT relief for married couples is supposed to incentivise marriage because marriage is good for society. I"m pissed off that my very committed lengthy loving relationship in which we work together to care for and raise our children is not deemed good enough unless we enter the state of matrimony.

As it is we mitigate it as best we can by being tenants in common rather than joint tenants.

BertrandRussell · 27/11/2017 15:56

"So that people who do NOT want those rights and responsibilities remain free to live their lives the way they choose."
Why should people who don't want to be married be forced into it?

PoorYorick · 27/11/2017 15:59

I would like us to have IHT relief yorick but we can't unless we get married because we are barred from having a civil partnership.

Ok. So what else is in the marriage contract that you don't want to sign up for?

I'm not getting at your choices at all, just trying to understand them.

VileyRose · 27/11/2017 15:59

Some people just don't want to get married...

RhiannonOHara · 27/11/2017 15:59

I agree with left. I don't have children, but otherwise my and DP's relationship sounds similar – long-term, committed and successful. I don't know why the only relationship recognised (for straight people) in law as deserving of tax breaks is the one called marriage.

Well, I could hazard a guess and say it's because there's a weird idea among politicians that marriage is a superior relationship to cohabitation.

PoorYorick · 27/11/2017 15:59

Why should people who don't want to be married be forced into it?

They shouldn't, which is why it needs to stay an active commitment and not something you can creep up on people because they live together.

KERALA1 · 27/11/2017 16:01

I may be missing something but I don't understand the objection to marriage. If you are in a long term committed relationship what is the issue with getting married?

I get why a person with alot of assets that they don't want to risk their partner getting their hands on because they already have kids from a previous relationship, or a bastard type man who wants a woman to look after his house and kids without having to maintain her if he wants an upgrade to a younger model would avoid marriage, but otherwise why?

BertrandRussell · 27/11/2017 16:02

"Ok. So what else is in the marriage contract that you don't want to sign up for?"
The bit about marriage.

Original poster

KitKat1985 · 27/11/2017 16:03

Goodness me, I only went out for a couple of hours and lots of replies!

I should probably expand on my OP to say that for me, most of the co-habiting couples I know have actively made a decision that they do not want to have financial obligations to their partner. Often they are divorced or similar from a previous relationship and don't want to enter into a marriage again after having been 'burned' the first time, or they would rather any assets they had automatically went to their children from their first relationship or similar. They would be mightily pissed off if just by virtue of having lived together that their partner would be entitled to their assets, and would probably rather not live together at all than risk their financial situation. My big issue therefore with 'common law marriage rights' is that you shouldn't force obligations on someone that they haven't agreed to.

When me and DH first lived together as co-habitees I wasn't very keen on the idea of marriage as being someone's 'wife' was a bit twee and made me feel that I would be somehow owned by DH. And then I realised that the legal and financial protections of being married were far more important than my discomfort over the term 'wife'. And I also realised that I knew DH well enough to know that his perception of me as an independent woman wouldn't change after we got married (for what it's worth, I think I still wear the trousers in our relationship)! Indeed after we got married etc, it felt weird to say we were married as our day-to-day life was exactly the same as it ever was) but we both have a lot more security. And it's not all about finances. I work as a nurse and it's often really sad when we have patients who are very unwell who have had a DP for years (often decades) who realise when their partner is critically ill that they are not considered next of kin and don't have any formal rights as to choices in that person's care.

Genuinely interested in people who say they would prefer a civil partnership for different-sex couples as well. Can I ask why? Many of the legal and financial commitments are pretty much identical anyway.

Shall we address the elephant in the room? Many married people think of themselves as a cut above unmarried people, and they like the fact that they can justify this by talking about legal considerations.

I'm sorry but that is utter bollocks.

OP posts:

leftbehind · 27/11/2017 16:04

"Ok. So what else is in the marriage contract that you don't want to sign up for?"
The bit about marriage.

Quite so Betrand

leftbehind · 27/11/2017 16:06

A marriage and a civil partnership are not the same. One involves marriage for a start.

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