Aibu to think if you want the legal protection of marriage then get married

[Sofabitch]

I was listening to the radio this morning and they were talking about how widows allowance isn't paid to couples that weren't married, even if children are involved.

Aibu to think marriage is essentially the legal joining of people and if you want to be recognised legally and finacially then you should get married.

I guess the supreme court will ultimately decide if I am being unreasonable. But i can't help but think people dont realise the legal security marriage offers and they should.

Whose interests are protected by preventing unmarried couples having the protections married couples have?

The person who doesn't want someone else to have an automatic right to half of their money?

I had two DDs and my own home when I met DH. We lived together for 5 years before marrying to make sure it worked for us, and in particular my girls and his DD. When we wanted to have automatic rights to each other we spent less than £500 getting married. In the registry office, no religion, just a short few words.

If you don't want to make a legal commitment you don't have too. But if choose not too then you don't get the legal protection that comes with it. No different really to opting to pay for something with a credit card over cash because of the protections it brings. No one forced you to make a choice, but when you do it's at your own risk.

How long do you think you should be together before you're allows to get married?
I don't give a shit if people get married after 5 minutes, but thats beside the point.

How would records be kept of who is "as good as married but not" and who isn't?

@bertrand

Would you want to be able to sign a legally binding contract, which offers exactly the same as a marriage, except that it’s called something else? Or do you think it should be assumed that by living together, you and your cohabiting partner want to be effectively ‘married’? So that if one of you suddenly died, hmrc would have to retrospectively exclude you from iht for example.

The former I totally get, but the latter sounds a bit impractical / open to abuse.

Nope- I'm quite happy the way I am. But the absurdity of people thinking there's something "special" about being married is a bit tedious really. It's all a bit "Well, I had to, so you do too".

I think that there are two types of people who don’t want to get married in principle.

There are the types who - for whatever reason - don’t want the other person to have an automatic entitlement to some or all of their assets if the relationship ends or they die.

And there are the types who would like that legal protection but object to the name and “baggage” that comes with marriage.

That’s all fine and well, but the government is already quite busy negotiating something slightly less beneficial but ultimately very similar to our current legal arrangements under a different name. It’s called “leaving the EU in name only“, it’s quite complicated and time consuming, and it means they haven’t got the time or the budget to arse around creating “like marriage but not marriage” for cohabiting couples who object to the “baggage” that comes with marriage.

People who say they don’t believe in marriage or don’t need a piece of paper are daft and have no right to complain if they don’t have the same legal protection as married people

Bear in mind that the legal protection tends to be for the financially weaker party. If you are the party with more income/capital, marriage gives away some of your control over your assets

But the absurdity of people thinking there's something "special" about being married is a bit tedious really

It's not absurd because there is something "special" about being married, that special thing being that it gives you lots of rights that being married doesn't.
What is absurd is your contention is that those same rights should be available to everyone in some form which you don't know how would practically work (probably because you know it wouldn't)

that not being married doesn't

I don't know where you're getting that from, Bertrand. There's nothing special about being married. It's just that marriage is the way this country and most others around the globe recognise the special bond that exists between committed couples, especially those who have children. Those who make an informed choice not to use those protections are perfectly entitled so to do. This thread is about those who have not made an informed choice because they think they already have protection or because they have misconceptions about what marriage is.

I may say before I go off to do something useful that I find it quite distasteful to see the posts pointing out that if the woman is the richer partner she probably won't want to get married because her partner would get a share of her assets if the marriage ended. Turn that around to the far more common situation of a woman being poorer and how does it sound?

Despite thinking gays (including my brother and his lovely partner of 20 years) should have exactly the same rights as a straight couple, I wonder about them wanting gay marriage. The bible is clear about how it feels about homosexuality and I don't know why you'd fight to be accepted by people who hate you. It's no different to a black person demanding to be part of the KKK.

You do realise, southernNights, that what you're actually saying here is that you think those gay couples who consider marriage to be the best fit for what they want legally, financially, emotionally, culturally, you name it, should nonetheless refrain from it, because of the Bible?! Of all fucking things! A book they may not have the slightest interest in, or accord any importance to, and which it is entirely possible to conduct a marriage without any reference to whatsoever. A couple engaging in a civil marriage, or indeed a religious marriage in a tradition not using the Bible, are not fighting for acceptance by anyone adhering to Biblical views.

Even leaving aside the absurdity of this, it's also victim blaming. Gay people aren't responsible for homophobia, and they don't bear any responsibility to change their behaviour because of it.

Also, why the focus on what the Bible has to say about homosexuality (male homosexuality at that, since lesbianism doesn't even get a mention)? Marriage is plenty older than Leviticus after all: I can name you at least one tradition dealing with both marriage and homosexuality that predates the Bible.The Judeo-Christian approach to marriage is simply something that some humans have attached to the practice, for some of its history. That's all.

Despite thinking gays (including my brother and his lovely partner of 20 years) should have exactly the same rights as a straight couple, I wonder about them wanting gay marriage. The bible is clear about how it feels about homosexuality and I don't know why youd fight to be accepted by people who hate you. It's no different to a black person demanding to be part of the KKK

What horseshit! Marriage has got nothing at all to do with the bible, so what are you even talking about?

Gasp0de, I was thinking the same thing.

If you have children from a previous relationship then there might be a very good reason for doing that. But there have been a few posters in this thread who have come on and said things like, “I already owned a house and was the higher earner and so not getting married was the right decision for me because I didn’t want my partner to have any claim to it.”

They’re perfectly entitled to make that decision but I wonder whether if a man had come on here and posted the same thing he might have got flamed for it.

YANBU.

Whose interests are protected by preventing unmarried couples having the protections married couples have?

Again, what we have here is someone thinking only of marriage in terms of protections, without also considering that remaining unmarried can also offer protection to some people. It just depends what you want. Is protection the ability to leave your estate to your children without your partner having a claim on it, or is it the ability to challenge your partner if they try to disinherit you? It depends where you're sitting, no? Some people think A, some people think B, and neither are necessarily wrong.

And this is how we have to view the discussion about any automatic attribution of the rights and conditions of marriage to people who haven't deliberately chosen it. Yes, they're gaining some rights. They're also losing others. If we as a society are going to take that step, we need to understand what we're taking away from people as well as giving them.

If people want the equivalent of civil partnership for heterosexual couples, they can just nip down to the register office and do the paperwork.

This misses the point. I am now married, but i put it off for as long as possible, because I did not like the all the patriarchal overtones, being given away, the mans vows being different to the woman's, all that stuff.

I would much, much rather have a civil partnership, a partnership of equals (not identical s, but equally valued ). I count myself lucky to have found a partner for whom this is a daily reality, but I am not delighted that, in order to have the legal protections and avoid IHT, I had undergo a marriage ceremony. In the preparation, the recorder had promised that out vows would be the same. During the ceremony, they did his vows first, and then when it was my turn, the wording was different. Sufficiently different that it mattered to me. I hesitated, asking myself whether i cared enough to disrupt the ceremony. I decided that i couldn't do that to him, but it was literally not what i had signed up for.

but i put it off for as long as possible, because I did not like the all the patriarchal overtones, being given away, the mans vows being different to the woman's, all that stuff

You don't haveto get given away, and vows are usually the same for both parties.

I would much, much rather have a civil partnership, a partnership of equals (not identical s, but equally valued

Like a marriage you mean?

Good post, PaulDacre. (Love the username, by the way.)

One poster said she deliberately did not get married because she was significantly richer than her partner. Automatically extending the same rights to unmarried couples as to married couples would take away her right to do that.

When my husband and I got married we gained the right to be legally and financially linked in terms of our assets and tax treatment. At the same time we lost the right to not be linked, and the right to walk away from the relationship without a backward glance.

I still don’t really see the point of marriage unless you have assets over 325k. All I’ve learned from this thread is that we should have equal savings in separate accounts and a joint one as well, WHEN we have any.

All my married friends are renting. We are the only ones to have been able to buy, maybe because we chose not to have a wedding. Who is better off?

We are all early 30’s and I just can’t really see how marriage has any benefits at this time. Widows allowance is only for a year. In all honesty I really don’t want to be anyone’s wife.

* W*hich are better than in civil partnerships

While i understand that there are differences, especially wrt children born of the marriage and the role of adultery in a marriage, these 'benefits' are only better if they suit you. If for example, you do not have children together, can you really not see that these so called benefits just fall away?

I really don’t want to be anyone’s wife

But you're happy to be 'girlfriend' 'partner' 'live in lover'

Just a name really

I rarely get called 'Wife' I'm generally referred to by my name

@Walkingdead surely marriage is not a person and therefore cannot be toxic. It is the people in the relationship who are toxic or not. Made me smile.

@Slievenamon vows are usually the same for both parties.

Can you point to any examples, where the vows are identical?

Marriage may have been patriarchal in the past but it doesn’t have to be now. I proposed to my DH (well, I informed him we were going to get married ), I wasn’t ‘given away’, I kept my surname and as we’re atheists there was no mention of religion during our ceremony.

We now have a certificate so that should one of us end up in hospital or die there will be no doubt about who can deal with the others affairs and what will happen to any property. It also means should one of us decide to walk away from the relationship we can’t shaft the other one.

It’s an arrangement we’re both happy with but if you don’t want to get married then please do make your wishes known to your family so that your partner doesn’t get pushed out and left with nothing should you get hit by a bus tomorrow morning.

My marriage certainly hasn't been toxic. Best thing that ever happened to me, although that is of course down to the underlying relationship.