Oh still hasnt asked me to marry him:(

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feel so down and i know im going to get roasted for posting this.

Oh and I have been together 10 years. We have a house , pets and a new dc to add to the family . We rarely argue and can honestly say he's my best friend and knows everything about me.

His previous relationship he was engaged but it all fell apart - thankfully or we wouldnt have our life we have just now. They were together a few years before he popped the question.

I hate the fact i have a different surname from dc. I feel like an outsider in my own family. We've talked about marriage and both want it - its more than a name change to me.

I just don't think it is ever going to happen and it just makes me sad.

I guess my aibu is - - ambi wrong to feel like this?

Oh carrie i dont think i could be waiting around that long for a proposal. Thaykt bridge would have been built aling time ago.

There more i think about it the more vulnerable i think i am I always wanted the reason to get married being romance and love . The law however doesnt recognise those things.

I dont intend to become a SAHP. I will continue to be part time unitl dc is at school then increase my hours i also intend to pay a higher percentage into my pensions when i go back. Oh doesnt have a pension as self employed but we really need to sort that out.

My best friend is in exactly this position (in fact if you hadn't mentioned pets it could've been her) and I happen to know something she doesn't....
Having said that however, I think there is something to be said for a man who knows his partner is desperate to be married but doesn't act on it for years. I know in my friends situation it was that her partner was extremely stubborn didn't want to feel 'pushed into it' and every time anyone mentioned it it was like he pushed it back by six months. Good luck but I think dialogue is key here rather than a 'down on one knee' proposal.

You say you lack confidence and his asking you to marry you would soothe that but chicken and egg, egg and chicken, the reason he's not asked is cos he knows that you'll tolerate his not asking, don't fear losing him. If you no longer fear losing a man who doesn't care what you have really wanted for a large part (?) of a decade then you will feel more powerful in the decision. To leave, stay, get married, no longer care, delegate childcare, prioritise earning..

ps, maybe the pension could be a good starter for the discussion you need to have.

You're afraid to have the discussion because you don't want to put pressure on him, but you are left without the information you need to make decisions and he feels no pressure, leaving you wondering for ages! When you talk pensions, make sure you have your own pension.

Are you me OP?!

Together 9 years and no proposal. Child has fathers surname. It sucks.

Im not going to propose to him though call me old fashioned but i wanted the whole down on one knee traditional thing.

Dont see it happening now though.

Im not going to propose to him though call me old fashioned but i wanted the whole down on one knee traditional thing.

I don't understand this. You can't be that traditional if you've had a child outside of marriage and moved in with someone without marrying them, so why is a big proposal so important?

If you want the protection of marriage - then get married! At the end of the day, waiting around for a proposal won't protect you and your DC if it all goes tits up.

* Can I check something though. I thought that after (2 years? ) if you were living together, you became comman law husband/wife and so, were entitled to same be benefits?*

Common law marriage does not exist in the U.K. It pains me to see how vulnerable some women are - they have children, quit work and move in with their partners and expect the same rights as those who have gotten married.

If you want the protection of marriage then you need to get married. You'll avoid inheritance tax, have rights to the family home and automatically be each other's NOK should it all go wrong. Anyone can change a will but it's a lot harder to disinherit a spouse.

Im not going to propose to him though call me old fashioned but i wanted the whole down on one knee traditional thing.

But do your partners know that you're hankering after this? Have you ever told them you're longingly waiting to get married?

If you don't have a cohabitation agreement in place, would you discuss getting one drawn up? This would cost hundreds of pounds and still wouldn't offer the protection of marriage, but it would be a conversation starter. Getting married is a much more straightforward way (and less expensive) to get the legal protection a cohabitation agreement does offer. If they won't agree to put in place the legal provision to protect you and your DC in the event of the relationship breakdown or one of you dying, then that would suggest rather more fundamental issues than getting down on bended knee

Op you will get loads of people on here saying, "oh well I just proposed to my husband," or, "we just had a discussion and that was it". It doesn't matter because you know what you want and you're entitled to feel that way.
He probably hasn't proposed because he doesn't need to - life is comfortable, why add the stress of a wedding?
Tell him how you feel. It's ok to say you feel more insecure after the baby. Tell him you want him to propose to you in a meaningful way because you only live once and this matters to you. It's not that difficult is it - the vast majority of men manage it.
It's lovely to have a ring and celebrate occasions - why not? Tell him how you feel and then leave it to him. Good luck!

Can I check something though. I thought that after (2 years? ) if you were living together, you became comman law husband/wife and so, were entitled to same be benefits?

Echoing previous posters. A hundred times NO. There was a cohabitation awareness week a couple of weeks ago to try to raise awareness of the myth of common law marriage

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

Cohabiting vs marriage: Six ways your rights differ

1. If one cohabiting partner dies without leaving a will, the surviving partner will not automatically inherit anything - unless the couple jointly own property. A married partner would inherit all or some of the estate

1. An unmarried partner who stays at home to care for children cannot make any claims in their own right for property, maintenance or pension-sharing

1. Cohabiting partners cannot access their partner's bank account if they die - whereas married couples may be allowed to withdraw the balance providing the amount is small

1. An unmarried couple can separate without going to court, but married couples need to go to a court and get divorced to end the marriage formally

1. Cohabiting couples are not legally obliged to support each other financially, but married partners have a legal duty to support each other

5.If you are the unmarried partner of a tenant, you have no rights to stay in the accommodation if you are asked to leave - but each married partner has the right to live in the "matrimonial home"

Source: Citizens Advice

I haven't RTFT but I think you should sit down together and talk about marriage and whether it is something you want to do.

DH and I wanted to marry but we couldn't afford to have a wedding, so we felt we had to hold off. Then we decided just to get married and it was so wonderful to free ourselves of the burden of organising a huge wedding we didn't want.

Getting married can be romantic but it can also be about practicality and security. Your relationship should have happiness and romance outside of concepts like engagement, marriage etc. If you're not happy as a couple now, for example, will marriage solve those issues. If you never got married but had all of the legal security that married couples have, would you be happy? Or is it more that you want the fairytale engagement and the ring and the wedding and the honeymoon etc?

What is it you actually want, I think is my question!

Get your name added as a signatory on your DC accounts asap

OP, you said it was a joint decision for him to be the sole signatory - I'm puzzled about why? You might as well both be on, surely? Why are you agreeing to things like this? You do seem very fearful of rocking the boat or speaking up for your own interests. Either that or you have very fixed ideas of what men's and women's roles are (men manage money, men propose) and those also aren't helping you.

There’s no legal status of common law wife cohabitation doesn’t confer same rights as marriage
You can register as each other nok with your GP, and make a will
If youre not on a joint mortgage, you can see a solicitor to draw up tenants in common or joint tenants agreement

Joint tenants own equal shares in a property. Upon death the other owner/s automatically inherits your share of the property. This overrides anything you may say in your will, so you cannot leave your share of the property to anyone else. But there could be Inheritance Tax to pay.

Tenants in common - you can own different shares of the property eg. a 70 - 30split.
the property doesn’t automatically go to the other owners upon death
you can pass on your share of the property in your will eg to children. But property ownership doesn’t automatically transfer to surviving partner upon death

Do discuss
You need to see a solicitor regard wills and finances

You need to plan your strategy carefully. None of this “just set a date, you’ve talked about it”.

Talking about getting married is not the same as committing to doing it.

He must know that you want to get married, and as others have noted, he’s had ten years to think about it. I’m not buying the reason some posters have suggested, ie that he was engaged years ago and it didn’t work out so he’s now terrified of being engaged. Bollocks.

I suspect that the current set up suits him just fine. He can walk away when he wants, and if he can keep you waiting and hoping whilst he holds all the cards, what better way to keep you behaving as he wants? Other threads of this nature have involved men in your partner’s position imposing conditions on the mothers of their children before they will even consider discussing marriage.

I realise this sounds a little cynical, and he may not have approached it quite as coldly, but that’s how things have worked out. I’d be telling him that I wanted to get married in 2018 and that you want to set a date by the end of January. Then see what he does.

Have a back-up plan ready. He needs to see that there are consequences if he doesn’t want to marry you. Somebody upthread referenced other discussions on here where men have upped and left their partners (who stayed home to look after their children) after 20 years. Don’t let that happen to you.

You're not BU to want to get married, albeit it's possible marriage will be greater legal protection for him than you based on what you've said about you having been the higher earner and possibly being so again eventually. But it's maddening reading about your complete refusal to engage and actually COMMUNICATE with your partner about this.

You need to talk about it and make proper, informed decisions, instead of pussyfooting around. Not least because of the will situation. It's absolute lunacy to have property and children with an unmarried partner, and be in even a temporary reduced earnings situation, without wills. But wills can be voided when you marry unless they were made in contemplation of marriage. So you both need to know what's what.

OP, good luck with all this. Don't feel embarrassed that you thought there was such a thing as common-law marriage - many, many intelligent, educated women labour under this illusion. I think it's something that should be covered in secondary school in PHSE lessons.

There are no legal rights which acrue by accident - you either have to do it explicitly and piecemeal for each individual bit of your lives (tenants in common on the mortgage, joint bank accounts, mirror wills, life insurance etc - and even then there are some things about marriage that you cannot replicate any other way, such as exemption from inheritance tax) or you get married and get all of the rights in one parcel. But you have to actively opt in.

In your situation, because you are clearly a romantic who wants to be marriage, and presumably part and parcel of that would be to have a celebration with family and friends, I suggest you tackle this as a two stage process.

1. Immediately - tie up the legal situation. So: Tenants in common, joint mortgage. Joint account. Mirror wills Legal documents naming each other as next of kin (that's just for starters - someone else may have a more complete list).

Do this as soon as you possibly can. Do not hang about. If you think your OP would feel threatened by a "what if we split" discussion, couch it in terms of "so-and-so's partner was killed in a car crash, and discovered she was legally shafted - did you know, for instance, that the house went to his parents, not her because he didn't have a will?" . But get it sorted immediately. If he digs his heels in or is reluctant in any way, start thinking seriously about your long term future together.

2). Then organise the wedding - tell him it matters to you. But you can do the proposing! As one of my friends who was in this position put it (she was take-it-or-leave-it about marriage, her OH really wanted to be married) "If I mean it when I say it's just a meaningless piece of paper, but I know it matters to him and would make him very very happy, why wouldn't I sign on the dotted line to make him happy? It's no skin off my nose, after all."

Hi still reading through comments.

butterymuffin the bank said only one of us is allowed to be a signatory on the account. We asked for both but the teller said they dont do it that way anymore. Dc was having a melt down and is bf so i went to feed dc in the car and oh completed the paper work. Was easiest thing to do at time and never really thought about it due to sleep deprivation and stress. Dc was only 2 weeks old.

Well if you have talked about it and both of you want to get married then you're already engaged so just ask your oh if you can discuss setting a date to get married.

There's a whole threw on which I've posted about the common law thing. As posters have said it does not exist legally.

You are very vulnerable legally and financially.

"He wouldn't see me or the kids go without" - famous last words - see the relationships and lone parents boards for what DOES usually happen - battling for every penny of maintenance, losing your home, car, furniture, jewellery, bank accounts emptied...

My ex - I was married but a sahm in married quarters no income of my own, joint bank account. Within a week of me kicking him to the curb for cheating - bank account emptied completely, car taken in dead of night, refused to pay maintenance (took csa almost 3 years to get their act together)

Other friends/relatives upon splitting -

Expensive jewellery taken inc wedding and engagement rings and anniversary gifts, furniture and tech taken inc kids computers, toys, share certificates, caravans, businesses screwed by bad mouthing...

Protect yourself as well as you can

IMO don’t do joint accounts have an account for yourself your salary. And a just in case fund

Do you have a daughter? Would you advise her to wait around until 'the man' decides he's ready, or would you suggest she is an equal in the relationship and to start the fucking discussion already if marriage is what she wants?

Eh? About the signatory?
In a joint account you have a bank card each and each can sign for anything

You need to talk to your chap ASAP

You need to realise most people who have got married have had a fairly serious conversation with their partner about it first. The guy proposing out of the blue happens so so rarely - I think you’ve built it up into a bit of a myth.

Protect yourself. Discuss marriage with him and make clear your views and needs.

Oh and common law marriage - I can’t believe there are still people who think It exists. It does not exist in the uk.

Common law wife,is a really misunderstood notion.doesnt exist but folk believe in it

I don’t understand the joint account signatory?why don’t you both have cards?or you do phone banking transfer money from joint to your account