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.

I don't think it's been mentioned but a recent court case saw two woman - long term partner and his mother argue of burial plans that ended up in court. His mother won the right to bury him as she chose. According to the partner he wanted X instead. (Who's to say?) They had children together. Sad turn of events and quite unusual. But marriage would've made it more straight forward.

Nope never heard this used (south west England). Everyone says "has capacity" or "lacks capacity". Plain English encouraged.

Whose interests are protected by preventing unmarried couples having the protections married couples have? Or is it really just a case of dog in the manger?

This is an interesting point because I look at this now from the point of view of someone who would never again enter into the contract of marriage - and would be vehemently oppose anyone imposing on me the obligations of marriage just because I have a relationship with a man.

I would say the interests being protected are those of the individuals who are clear that they do not want to accept the "protections" of marriage which is why they have not entered into a marriage contract.

I am married for 25 years. I entered into that contract knowing it was a contract (I also had a religious ceremony that meant a lot to me and dh but that had nothing to do with the contractual and legal obligations/rights imposed by marriage). I now have 3 almost grown children. DH and I have spent 25 years building a life for us and them. I don't like to think of him dying but if he did die, I would also not rule out me ever having another relationship. But the assets we have built together are for me and my children.

I would like to have the option to have a friendship/sexual relationship or even move in with someone if I was widowed. I would be fairly pissed if that was seen as me merging my assets with his. If I wanted to do that I would marry him.

I kind of understand the patriarchy argument - although historically marriage was as beneficial to women as it was punative - it gave rights that non-married women who had children with or had sex with men did not have. And I don't care who marries or who doesn't.

But the idea that the obligations of a marriage could be imposed on me by living with someone without me ever actually assenting to that contract... fuck that.

My uncle was 'married' or so I thought for well over 40 years they had children and multiple homes grandchildren. He was a millionaire.

Turns out they never actually married. He left her for a woman half his age and they have since married.

He's nearly 70!

Guess who'll get the inheritance? Shes younger than his youngest. I doubt she'll share

(Secretly hoping he's transferred his wealth to the kids already and she'll be left skint)

and would be vehemently oppose anyone imposing on me the obligations of marriage just because I have a relationship with a man.

I completely agree pallisers.

I haven’t read all the replies but YANBU OP.

I'm in two minds about this.

On the one hand the government is perfectly happy to treat unmarried people living together as though they are married if it means they can pay them less benefits, such as JSA, or tax credits. If they can manage it when it saves them money they can manage it when it costs them money.

On the other hand you would need some way to settle disputes as to whether a couple were really in a relationship that counted for various purposes. Maybe there could be a way for couples to register their relationship with the government. They could sign a form? Maybe call it a marriage certificate...

and would be vehemently oppose anyone imposing on me the obligations of marriage just because I have a relationship with a man.

Totally agree with this.

My DH was a widow with a young child when we met. His late wife was financially savvy. Her insurance had paid off their mortgage and left him in a good position to change his job/hours to suit DS1.

When I moved in he made a decision to give up his widowed parents allowance, which you can't have once you live with someone which is totally understandable as it was in place to help take away the strain of a lost second income.

However, there is no way in the world I should have had a single penny of claim on that house, or his/their savings, until such a time as he was happy to get married and take the risks of that, as well as gaining the benefits of it.

And how much more simplified can it be? We had a humanist wedding (legal in Scotland). Took 15 minutes (could have taken less, but we were cheesy and added a bit about the kids as I had 2 and he had 1 already). It was

For older couples with no shared children who only want the legal cover for property etc a civil partnership would be a good answer.

What puts many people off marriage is the fact that you have to agree for the rest of your life unless you go through a divorce which isn't exactly cheap, if you marry at 20 that could be 50+ years, what you want at 20 may not be what you want at 50.

Why can't Civil Partnerships be a legal agreement that is renewable at intervals & if either partner doesn't want to renew the partnership dissolves without having to divorce, agreements could be made at the same time as the civil partnership is made about property & finances if the partnership isn't renewed almost like a will or prenuptial agreement is now, both partners know where they stand financially if they walk away. The partnership would automatically have to be renewed on the birth of children & agreements made for them at that time.

Knowing the divorce rate now it would cut costs & endless battles through solicitors & create some protection for couples who aren't sure of the whole till death us do part thing, plus not being able to have a partnership without the legal agreement of finances & property would make couples have to be sure that it was what they wanted.

Why can't Civil Partnerships be a legal agreement that is renewable at intervals & if either partner doesn't want to renew the partnership dissolves without having to divorce, agreements could be made at the same time as the civil partnership is made about property & finances if the partnership isn't renewed almost like a will or prenuptial agreement is now, both partners know where they stand financially if they walk away. The partnership would automatically have to be renewed on the birth of children & agreements made for them at that time.

Are you with the Law Society? So as well as managing the changing face of your relationship as you have children, get older, lose jobs etc you also have to book an appointment with your solicitor every 5 years to make sure your interests and those of your children are being best managed?

Reading this thread, it seems the best thing that could happen is that the government change the word marriage to "civil partnership" and then define civil partnership as exactly what marriage is but without the word marriage involved.

But I bet loads of people (men) will still refuse to get civil partnershiped because it is only a piece of paper isn't it.

Pallisers isn't that what is supposed to happen when you make a will? As you gain children, property, money etc shouldn't a will be reviewed & amended? If a civil partnership had to be reviewed & renewed at intervals these things are covered. How many couples get married without owning property & then as the marriage progresses buy a house, inherit from parents & family but don't stop to think about what would happen if they divorced or died & end up losing out on what they have? I owned a house before I got married which my ExH & I then lived in when we got married, when we got divorced I was forced to sell my house as my ExH was entitled to half of it, I now can't afford to buy again & am forced to rent a home for myself & our son to live in. Had we been made to have an agreement & a Civil Partnership I would have been able to state as part of the agreement that the house would remain mine as the mortgage was in my name only & I paid it from my salary. The only truly joint assets we had was furniture we purchased together & the only joint finances were we split food & utility bills equally, anything needing to be done to the house itself I paid for myself. It's too easy to get married & not know how you stand in the future if things go wrong & have to pay large amounts of money when getting divorced. call me bitter if you want but I would never enter into the institution of marriage as it stand again, I would rather be able to protect & be responsible for my own assets & finances.

Legally marriage is a massive deal as you found nat.

It's hard explaining to later in life couples with own respective kids that once married you cannot then cut the other out entirely in favour of your own kids. E.g. One couple she had lots of assets from her family him none. Determined to marry as "romantic". Frankly my advice to her would have been don't get married.

I find it strange that everyone wanting civil partnerships for heterosexuals seems to view it as meaning equals or equal partners. Partnerships can be very uneven with senior and junior partners benefitting at very different levels.

Marriage used to be religious and was very patriarchal but those days have long gone. Surely as modern women we can just discuss what we want and expect from marriage with our future DH and if our views match then go ahead. Any of the social expectations crap from family and friends can be ignored or they can be corrected just like we do when people have views on the way we are raising our DC for example.

The wedding industry has a lot to answer for. In the days when everybody got married, most weddings were modest affairs, often arranged in a hurry because the bride was pregnant. The important thing was to get that piece of paper signed so that everything was respectable.

Nowadays, weddings are often so expensive that they take place years and years into a relationship. The couple save up for housing and having children and the perfect wedding has to wait. Unfortunately, the need for legal protection and recognition of the relationship comes long before then.

My best friend got engaged to her soldier partner when he returned on his r and r week. They were living together. A week after he went back to Afghanistan he was killed. Do people think she shouldn't of been entitled to her widows pension?

I find it strange that people want civil partnerships - which were basically a homophobic invention to try and calm the bids for gay marriage, yet bang on about marriage being so rooted in patriarchy. Yes, perhaps in bygone days pre-civil marriage it was so, but CP's were homophobic in 2004.

snapple21

Your friend’s story is very sad.

However.

A friend’s son is a soldier and when he comes home he always picks up a different girl from the club for ‘fun’ while he he is here. Maybe he tells them he loves them. Should one of those girls get widow’s pension? If so which one? The one he saw more than once? The last one, the one he liked most?

If he wanted any of them to be a permanent feature in his life he would have paid £95 and taken 30 minutes out of his day to sign the paperwork. It really is that simple.

's hard explaining to later in life couples with own respective kids that once married you cannot then cut the other out entirely in favour of your own kid

Yes you can in England and Wales (I think it is different in Scotland). You cannot entirely cut out your dependent spouse, or at least your dependent spouse can challenge a will that does, but in the case you propose where each spouse brings assets and income to the relationship a will which left everything you brought in to the relationship to your children is fine. Couverture hasn’t been a thing since the 1840s.

I strongly disagree with marriage,I don't want a ceremony forming me into a couple. I'm with my partner of nearly 30 years with who I have children because I want to as an individual. I am still separate. Times have changed. Cohabiting couples and unmarried parents make up a huge part of the population,even a huge proportion of those who get married don't stay married. Society needs to reflect the huge shift in social priorities. Many families really don't want a marriage but do want protection. CP would refictify this. As a mother of a gay son who has suffered homophobia I resent the inference that CP is homophobic and thus off the table. Seriously. For the record I'd prefer my gay son to have a CP than a wedding but at the end of the day it will be his choice and he can choose. We'd like to have the same option. Not entirely sure why we shouldn't.

My DH's grandfather married his long term partner (35 years) last year and sent us a photo of them in the pub after with a just married balloon! They are 80/70 respectively and did it for inheritance purposes. Ironically it is his wife who is now terminally ill which they hadn't expected.

My MIL and her sisters were furious that they did it in secret and that their mother (from whom he has been divorced 40 years but still financially supports youngest child is now 51 he's the most decent man you'll ever meet) will not inherit his estate!

“Why can't Civil Partnerships be a legal agreement that is renewable at intervals & if either partner doesn't want to renew the partnership dissolves without having to divorce, agreements could be made at the same time as the civil partnership is made about property & finances if the partnership isn't renewed almost like a will or prenuptial agreement is now, both partners know where they stand financially if they walk away. The partnership would automatically have to be renewed on the birth of children & agreements made for them at that time.”

Apart from being an incredibly complex and time consuming system, some people would clearly fall through the cracks.

What if you enter into one of these, then you have children and give up work to be a SAHM, and then five or ten years later when your agreement is due for “renewal”, your partner decides not to renew? What, they just walk away and leave you literally holding the baby? Without having to go to court and formally divorce you?

Bloody hell. No, that does not sound good at all.

There is a reason why divorces are difficult to get; it’s because marriage is supposed to be a lifelong commitment and you’re not supposed to just be able to wander in and out of them whenever you feel like it.

In France the pacte civil is easy to get and easy to dissolve. But it doesn’t confer the full legal benefits/responsibilities of marriage. It allows the couple to benefit from the same tax treatment as though they were married, and I think it has some advantages if they have children, but it doesn’t confer any notion of shared marital property, for example.

A few other differences. Pre nups are a thing here. When you arrange your civil marriage you’re required to state whether you’ve made a “contrat de mariage” or not, and that’s recorded on your marriage certificate. We chose not to have one but many of our friends did. In the UK prenups aren’t legally enforceable but they will be taken into account in certain circumstances. Only worth doing if you are very rich at the time of the marriage and have a lot of assets to protect though.

Also, in France there is much less testamentary freedom, so it’s much harder for children (e.g. from a first marriage) to be cut out or missed out of a will in favour of a new spouse or children from a second marriage.

I think maybe some form of pacte civil would be a good idea in the UK, but I can’t see the government introducing it any time soon. I certainly can’t see our (mostly male) politicians being up for creating something that has all the same legal implications of marriage but doesn’t come with “sexist baggage”. It just isn’t going to be a priority.

Lobby the government for change if you want, but in the meantime you are stuck with the system we have.

I honestly don’t get why on Earth anyone would have a problem letting opposite sex couples have a cp. So long as they’re made aware of the difference between CP and marriage. I’m married, so obviously I don’t have a problem with it, but it’s clear from this thread that a lot of people do and they’d be happier having a CP. So why not? Obviously, you can have a marriage without the pomp and ceremony of a traditional wedding, but it seems that a lot of people don’t want this option either. Why can’t those people have an alternative? Seems silly to me. I know that wasn’t the initial point of CP, but now it exists I don’t see why it can’t be an option for all. Is it because they don’t want cohabiting siblings or friends abusing it to escape iht?

"My best friend got engaged to her soldier partner when he returned on his r and r week. They were living together. A week after he went back to Afghanistan he was killed. Do people think she shouldn't of been entitled to her widows pension?"

Army wife here. Yes, the general idea that the Army only makes legal commitments to those its personnel have made legal commitments to, is sound. Whether his pension allows a legal acknowledgement of an unmarried partner depends on which scheme he is in

If he made that commitment in a pension scheme which allows for it, then the surviving partner gets e pension. If the serving person preferred to stay in an older scheme with no provision for unmarried partners, or failed to nominate the partner, then I think it is correct that the pension is paid out.

She may or may not have received the occupational widows pension from the Army, depending on those factors. She will not however have received any state bereavement benefits (entirely different rules)

Obbviously 90% of the reason men object to marriage is because of the protection it gives! They want a wife and a family but they want all of the risk to be hers.
You cant make a man like that have a CP as it's all the same to him. 9 times out of ten it's not the religious bit that they object to, it's that their not quite a 'wife' might have rights.

These threads always strike me as a bit pointless. Posters who married tell the unmarrieds they should have married. Nobody is telling the men to do the right thing. Nobody is telling the men not to slip in to relationships they dont value and nobody is telling men not to have children with women they wouldnt want to marry.
As usual all of the advice is directed at the women who have no power. Either because they earn so little the father of their child considers them a liability not the other half of a team, or because they are dependents and no money is no voice.

So tell the men. But wait! Men do what they want. Men collectively do not care about women's issues or rights. Some do. But how do you make men be better people?