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.

So is marriage a disadvantage for the individual with the higher income/assets if the relationship was to flounder?

Depends on how you look at it. If the higher income was enabled because the other partner took the financial hit in order to take greater care of family and domestic responsibilities, it's a fair price and protection.

Also, I'm a huge believer in 'mean with money, mean with love'. I have never, ever seen an exception. This is basically what refusing to marry because you don't want to risk sharing your assets means.

I don't imagine there are many women living the life of Riley because they were married for six months and had no kids together. The significant payouts are from long term marriages where the wife's contribution to the family wealth is demonstrable, if not financial.

I would never trust or love a man who was happy for me to give up or restrict my earning, pension contributions etc to raise his kids and run his house, but wouldn't marry me. He'd call it 'cleaning him out', well I'd call it fair pay.

When my relationship with exp was breaking down, I investigated how I might find any cash he'd stashed and it seemed I would have no more success with or without a wedding ring.

I didn't think of death/death benefits when I was with exp, we had wills and insurance so it was never something I was concerned about.

Exp had signed an organ donor card and his mother said she'd block any possible organ donation from him if he had an accident and organ donation was a possibility. She said she'd do this because she'd have the right to do it and there would be nothing I could do about it because we weren't married. She also said she'd arrange his funeral as I would be able to because of our marital status. He didn't have any terrible accidents so the situation never arose, but it struck me as unfair.

Possibly a stupid question but would anyone be prepared to outline the legal benefits and protections of marriage for childless couples?

I am not arsed about getting married but then wonder when I read things like this if I should be.

DP and I googled the benefits and there didn't seem to be any that couldn't be resolved with a will in the event of inheritance. Nothing else.

This is a genuine request for advice.

The real disadvantage of not being married is if only 1 of you owns the property and/or there is no will. If you both own the property and have a will the difference is pretty negligible
^
unless you are poor and can't afford to buy like about 50% of the population, then you lose out on around 10K+ of widows allowance and pension support

Also as has been said several times it's not just relationship breakdown that's the issue its serious incapacitating illness and death can make life and finances really messy if you're not married

All of this

Sorry, I would be unable to organise the funeral of my unmarried partner. That was then, 1990s/2000s not sure what the situation is now.

@thatmustbenigelwiththebrie

These are just the financial implications:

Why getting married leaves you better off

This covers the full range of differences:

CAB - Living together and marriage - legal differences

(Wills can also be changed without the other partner's knowledge at any point)

DP and I googled the benefits and there didn't seem to be any that couldn't be resolved with a will in the event of inheritance

1. if either of you dies there is no entitlement to widows allowance, bereavement payments (£2500 initial lump sum without children, then 18 monthly payments of £100) (£3500 lump plus 18 monthly payments of £350 if they have children)

1. your ability to be next of kin could be challenged if your partner became incapacitate or died, someone else could decide organ donations, funerals etc

1. tax breaks

-inheritance tax - capital gain tax increase - shuffling of income to avoid paying higher taxes etc

1. Pensions Being married entitles you to a contribution from Final salary pension schemes

1. married couples allowance (okay it is a pitence but every little counts)

1. Access to bank accounts, not automatic if one person died and the other had all the money in their name, well it would be tied up for months potentially leaving you in the shit. how many couples have all their accounts as joint?

1. Divorce, you're entitled to a fairer split

I think these are the key differences, there may be more?

Hmm on the fence with this one. I'm not a fan of marriage as personally see it as an outdated religious tradition whereby a man can take over ownership of a woman from her father. But I do think that couples should be able to go down to a solicitors and register their relationships so that their relationship is as legally valid as a married couple and entitled to the same protection.

beardy Isn't your stance a bit like saying 'I'm not in favour of schools because they cane children and expect them to learn latin'?
Whatever marriage might have been like in the past, it isn't that now.

Marriage is the term given to legalising a couple being protected as a long-term partnership (not very well worded) as opposed to just happening to live together for now.

If you don't want the religious bit you get married at a registry office or a hotel or whatever.

But they can, beardy. They can go to the town hall in their lunch hour with two witnesses pulled off the street and have a brief, totally secular ceremony to draw up a contract of marriage. They don’t have to tell anyone if they don’t want to; they don’t have to use the terms ‘husband’ or ‘wife’ if they don’t want to.

Universities used to exist solely for the training of the clergy. Does that mean that atheists should boycott them now?

I am surprised by the number of people who believe that after living together for a period that you have the same rights / legal situation as if married, 60% according to Moneybox! Why do people believe things for which there is no evidence and they have clearly not bothered to do any research or they would know it not to be the case. Surely everybody knows of someone who has been left in a dreadful situation because they weren't married.

It's not the same as going into a solicitors where it's between you and the solicitor. No one knows if you have made a will or not for example. Marriage on the other hand, You have to declare it beforehand and have it publically displayed for all to see.

But there are valid reasons for those procedures being in place before the relationship is recognised legally.

What happens if people "register" relationships with more than one person without the others knowing? Are solicitors responsible for keeping some kind of centralised register?

I'm now looking back at why marriage never interested me. It still doesn't, and my DP feels the same. My exp is now living with a lady who also doesn't want to marry him!

I think that I didn't see what the state had to do with my life or my status or my relationship. It seemed that if my relationship ended, that was my and my partner's business, not some judge. Why should I have to provide grounds for declaring the relationship dead if I and the partner both know it is? So if divorce had been easier, I might have been interested in marriage.

I also didn't like the symbolism, being given away etc.

I thought final salary pensions were almost gone, at least for new employees of organisations that used to offer them. I think I'd feel a little sad if someone wanted to marry me for my pension. Why can't they sort their own out?

You're clutching at straws here. Who goes into the registry to see who's going to get married? Nobody. It's exactly the same as signing a legal document at a solicitors' office. This bloody preciousness about something so simple and easy is really pissing me off.

And that's completely fine obviously. If you've looked into it and decided you don't want any state involvement in your relationship then that's absolutely your choice to make.

The issue arises when people say that they don't want to marry but they do want the benefits that are currently only available to those who are married. Many of those involve the state (IHT and benefit entitlement being the two most obvious).

No one goes into the registry office to specifically see who is getting married. But they might be in to register a birth or a death or to research their ancestry. Or attend another wedding. And if you live in a small town such as mine if your name was on the board then it might as well be in the papers. And a national register for solicitors to check wouldn't be particularly hard to set up. Its not preciousness to want to keep my private affairs, well private.

Sara, as said up thread, many people may believe they have some entitlement to IHT benefits etc because for child benefit, student loans, and probably a myriad of other money related form filling, joint household income is taken into account. This gives the impression that the coupling is recognised by the state.

Advocating marriage for the avoidance of doubt in the event of requiring widows allowance/bereavement benefits is a nonsense. It’s a hammer to crack a nut. It would be v. easy to establish dependency just as is done for other financial payments. The reality is these payments are being squeezed and phased out so the government is disinclined to do so. Good luck to the lady with 4 kids pursuing her case. She should not be penalised for not being married. To say it’s her own fault for not getting married is missing the point.

Some of the reasons I’ve seen on this thread for why people are against marriage are pathetic, obviously you’re entitled to your own opinions, but really!

You won’t get married because some people get ‘given away’ by their father and that used to (in the past, when things were very different) literally mean the bride was being given from her father to her husband, because some people choose to have a religious element to their wedding (but you don’t have to, it’s personal choice), because your relationship has nothing to do with ‘the state’ (paranoid much?)

You don’t have to get married, and if you don’t want to that’s fine, but don’t whinge that you can’t the same rights and entitlements that you would if you were married when a registry office marriage is cheap, takes about 30 minutes and is accessible to all.

Well you've got two choices then. Get married and get the legal protection it confers or don't get married and do without that protection. And it is utterly and completely precious as far as I'm concerned.

I know someone with parents with whom she is NC. The last thing she would want is for them to decide medical treatment, funeral cremation vs burial, organ donation in place of her dp. One of the reasons she got married, no property, no dc.

I guess its just a decision you have to make, whether you want to be protected or not. I do think that same sex couples should be able to take the civil union route - perhaps those people don’t care if you can’t end the CU because of adultery (I’m picking there are other reasons you can end it anyway?).

Just as a matter of interest to others, I’m an expat who lives in New Zealand. Over here we do have the “common law” relationship. It happens after you have been living together for three years. After that time everything is considered “relationship property” unless you sign a legal document to say otherwise. We don’t have inheritance tax in NZ.

This way of doing things usually works because we also have Family Trusts as part of our law, which means that if, for example, you have built up assets yourself and then you enter into a relationship you can have put those assets (i.e house) into a family trust which is the protected from your partner (even if they then turn into your wife) if you split up. You name your “beneficiaries” in the Trust and it only applies to them eg you say “current spouse”. THis protects your children down the line if you split. If you don’t have a Trust and you don’t have a Property Relationship Agreement then you are screwed if you split wiht someone who came into the relationship with nothing.

However I do believe that this way of doing things does have an effect on family life over here. I personally don’t believe it encourages marriage or long term commitment. When I came over here (16 years ago) I couldn’t believe how many people had multiple children to multiple fathers or vice verse (my neighbour for example is father to five children from three different women). It seems to happen way more than in the UK.

Marriage is an anticrated ritual based on the division of property in death. Society evolves and so should the laws.