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.

Marriage portrayed as patriarchal isn’t the whole story - it has also acted as a protection of the rights of a woman and her children. Too many men now feel a lower level of obligation towards the children they sire and women, normally the primary carer, have a nasty shock when the romance fades and the family unit is not as regarded in the same light as that of a legally established one. I have no religious affiliation and no ethical/moral view on the institution but I still have a niggling feeling that if you are prepared to have a child together you could also be prepared to make a legal, public commitment to be a couple and thence a family.

Kerala,Well maybe you have a one dimensional world view and cannot understand deviation from your norm

As I have said repeatedly I chose not to be married, I am capacitous I understand the consequences

It’s not a sista thing, you do other adults a disservice by that minimisation
It’s an adult capacitous choice thing

Kerala You however seem to struggle with other adults making different choices

If marriage were so patriarchal, more men would be willing to do it.

How would that work WTF? What if there's more than one family?

One scenario that wasn't mentioned in the Anna and Brenda and Gina and Debbie, Freya and Jim cases is that of abusive relationships.

Abuse can take time to come to the fore and even more time before the victim can extricate themselves from it. Allowing for the benefits of marriage to be conferred on long term relationships means that an abuser can simply bide his time/get his victim pregnant and then relieve her of her money, pension, a share of her home and her DC's of their inheritance after 1 year/3 years/a baby?

No thanks.

Great post Graphista.

Yeah the problem is that unmarried women, as a cohort, don't differ from married in respect of detrimental impact on income, pension etc when they have children. Not being married doesn't stop a woman from paying the economic carer penalties. Thus, as cohorts, the two are doing basically the same thing and the difference is only in the degree of protection afforded. If all women who weren't married did continue to work FT, take legal advice etc, it might be different, but they don't.

Nah. Just realistic. Not sure "capacitous" is a real word.

I think the benefit system may make the difference between marriage and co-habiting less clear
I.e when you move in together whether co-habiting or married you have claim many (though not all) benefits as a couple and the earnings/savings you have are assessed together. that may give the impression that you have more rights in other ways if you split or one dies.

capacitous v much a real word that you're unfamiliar with
Capacitous an adult with capacity who can make decisions and weigh Up pro/cons of decision

I knew a lovely woman who lived with a lovely man. I'd always assumed they were married.

I think you can guess what happened next. He died, they weren't married, she had to move out of the house they'd shared for 25+ years, that was sold by his kids. He'd made no provision for her in his will.

She was in her late 60s. Can you imagine?

I probably shouldn't have married my second husband because I have kids and my own house (which is now legally "our" house). It's much more complicated second time around.

Yes I suspect that's true bagadvert. We do have a system that wants it both ways. You move someone in and they immediately affect your benefit entitlement without you doing anything formal. Meanwhile they're effectively treated like a lodger if you die intestate.

Yes,v interesting point

I can't find Capacitous in any of the English dictionaries. I think it's an American word and it means "Having the legal capacity to do something."

Excellent point Bagadverts . Alsi, forms giving you the option to select ‘cohabiting’ are just using the information for data collection but people then think this means something, when actually it doesn’t.

"Capacitous" means "having the legal capacity to do something".

hmmm, not sure I agree that this insistence that women be married in order to have protection is fair really.

Obviously I would advise my daughter (and my son actually) to be married but I think the system we have at the moment is an excellent way for the patriarchy to make women pay the price for maintaining the population. The reason women need ''protection'' is because 1) they're paid less and 2) having children damages your career (NOT all the time but those are the obstacles most commonly faced). Telling women that they need to be married before having children is sensible advice but at the same time, as a divorced woman with 2 children, I feel that we shouldn't be making women pay a higher price for parenthood than the reduced price we tolerate men paying.

THAT is what I want to rail against.

The benefits system is an income issue though. People don't only lose benefits if they move in a partner. They lose some (council tax discount, portions of housing benefit) if they have a child who becomes and adult, or an adult of another relationship live with them.

I wouldn't actually change the system because there are co-habiting couples who actively don't want to be financially linked - much easier to publicise the differences and let people make the choice.

Given the level of cohabitation the government has to decide to assess these as couples for income based benefits unless the whole system was overhauled to assess everyone individually. That wouldn't work either - one person with no income or savings getting full income based benefits (?stay at home parent or just lazy) while living with their partner or spouse earning thousands and all the savings in their account.

It often seems to be men who are reluctant to marry as they are paid more. If we lived in a World where women were routinely paid as much and where childcare was govt funded like the NHS then women wouldn't be at a disadvantage through biology.

As for all these women who was apparently walking blindly in to procreation without protection, I do think women have a much tougher decision. If you meet a man you want to marry in good time, tick tock, then great, you're lucky, but possibly women have to decide to have a child with a man who is far from ideal because they have maybe four -six more years of childbearing years anyway. They figure that their finances they can if they're LUCKY sort out later but they can't bring their ovaries back from the dead.

Criticising women for having children with losers is just another stick to beat women with.

Am a solicitor who works in a field where capacity is crucial and have NEVER heard anyone use that word?! Is it Scottish or American?

My mum rejected marriage as a concept and lived as a single woman all her life. She had friends who tried various different alternatives - communal living, open relationships, that kind of thing (its was the 70s). Mostly those arrangements ended in tears, but the people involved were sincerely seeking new family and relationship structures.

Nowadays I find myself surrounded by people who ape the conventions of traditional marriage in their entirety - highly educated women who give up their jobs to be SAHM and facilitate their male partners' careers to the point where it makes no financial sense for the woman to go back to work, 'feminist' male partners who are happy to let them do this - but who regard themselves as radical because they eschew the "piece of paper" that would ensure their financial security if said male partner dies or fucks off with someone else. Oh, but marriage is patriarchal

I can’t help but think that the people who object to marriage on principle actually are in a situation where their partner won’t marry them, that or they have a fundamental misunderstanding of what marriage is.

There are plenty of things in life to object to on principle but marriage isn’t one of them. As previous posters have pointed out, no one has to know that you’re married for you to benefit from its protections, you don’t have to change your name or be given away, all you HAVE to do is recite two sentences in front of witnesses, sign a bit of paper and pay the fee, the same as most other legal contracts.

capacitous
I'm a psychiatrist. I specialise in assessment of capacity and write extensive reports for the courts in this respect. I use the term capacitous on a regular basis. It is often used in reference to assessments of capacity in a medical context. I am surprised that anyone claiming to be a solicitor claims to be unfamiliar with this word. I'm in Scotland but most solicitors I've dealt with are worldly enough to have an awareness of legislative terms outside their own jurisdictions.

Personally I still think that if you're going to spend money on a bit of paper to protect your wishes when you are no longer capacitous, it's much more meaningful to complete a power of attorney rather than get a marriage certificate. I really wish more people were aware of this - often by the time people end up taking that advice from me, it's too late for them and their spouse therefore gets no say in their care without a lengthy court process to seek guardianship.

Am a solicitor who works in a field where capacity is crucial and have NEVER heard anyone use that word?! Is it Scottish or American?

Capacitous is a common term in my (English) profession (mental health care). Since we all obviously understand what it means, perhaps this is not the issue to focus on?

I'm another on who would like to be able to have a heterosexual civil partnership with my long term dp but doesn't want to get married.

While I am not blind to the advantages of marriage, I am entirely uncomfortable with the historical context of the institution. I want an alternative to marriage (either civil partnership or something else) which doesn't carry the same connotations of ownership of women.