Women who have children before marriage

[FissionChips]

..but get upset when their partner does not want to/ has not asked to marry them , yet still insist they are too traditional to even contemplate asking their dp to marry them or just discussing it like adults.

I dont get it. Most of the complaining women give the child their partners surname as well which isn’t even traditional if the parents are not married. They live together for years. They are in no way following tradition.
AIBU to not understand why they lie about being “traditional “?

How is this bashing single parents?

People just need to understand the implications of the choices they make. If you are an unmarried parent you lose out on some of the protections marriage gives you. This is usually to the detriment of the more financially vulnerable spouse. The more financially vulnerable spouse is more likely to be the woman than the man but this is not always the case.

Fml signing a will also requires witnesses. These threads always end up the same way, even though the op wasn't trying to start a war regarding marriage.

Registry offices will literally provide the witnesses for you. It's no different to going to a solicitor to sign a will or other legal document.

If you're signing a contract of importance, getting a witness to verify that you did it freely is standard issue. I created some trusts recently and needed to get that witnessed, and that was much less significant than the legal implications of marriage are.

If the state did introduce some replication of marriage that wasn't called marriage, it would of necessity have to involve witnesses. Thus, people who for some reason allow that to put them off making legal arrangements would still face the same ridiculous problem.

I think what we’re saying though banana is that there are situations where people want the rights without the marriage ceremony. It’s easy for people to say just go to a registry office but there’s still the need for witnesses and how ever down played this is there’s still far too many formalities. Why can’t it be just a case of signing and that’s it without the ‘marriage’ and rings and religious part.

Wills require witnesses - it's standard for a legal contract to be witnessed

We didn't have any rings. We didn't have any religion at our civil marriage.

We made an appointment, gave notice as part of that appointment (like how you agree the terms of the will before it's written)

We turned up at the registry office - we brought our own witnesses but you can ask someone from the registry office or two strangers on the street to be your witnesses. Same as when we signed our wills, they had to be witnessed

The only difference was that we gave assent to the contract of marriage verbally as well as in writing

In and out on a Tuesday afternoon. Took less time than getting our wills sorted!

bananafish81

Oh and on the pregnancy point, "Human error" encompasses a lot of complex motivations and actions (which you well know). Another poster recommended Promises You Can Keep which is pretty great. Most unplanned pregnancies are only "unplanned" in the loosest sense of the word. However, women are not "tricking men" into pregnancy. It's probably more accurate to say that couples are drifting into pregnancy, sometimes with a little nudge.

‘Registry offices will literally provide the witnesses for you. It's no different to going to a solicitor to sign a will or other legal document.’

Really? i saw a thread recently involving people asking strangers to be witnesses because they couldn’t get any! Is it always that easy?

There are no doubt occasions when it's not possible, but then it's also occasionally the case that nobody is available in a solicitor's office to be the second witness. A few years ago in my old firm, a client had made an appointment to do a will and had booked an early appointment before getting to work, but the receptionist called in sick so the drafting solicitor was the only staff member around. They ended up waiting 20 minutes and I got nabbed as soon as I came in.

So realistically, if anyone for some reason finds the prospect of a civil marriage impossible because of the witness requirement, that problem is also going to be replicated if they want to engage in an alternative LikeMarriageButNotMarriage contract. Because it's going to require witnessing too.

Yes because it is ‘marriage.’ Again a lot of people feeling they have to get married to better their situation when they’d otherwise not.

I'll be straight here. Been with my dp 24 yrs. Have 2 grown up kids together. After seeing both my uncles go through shitty divorces I was extremely averse to marriage.

For various reasons I am financially better off than dp - never had joint finances - and I did not want to put myself at risk of financial ruin if we divorced. Then I had viral meningitis this year. Shortly after I saw a financial advisor, they asked why we weren't married. I go through this conversation numerous times a day with my clients. I had been scared. Now I realise, for us, it is abdolutely the right thing to do. We talked on the way home from that appointment, and are now getting married to legally protect ourselves.

We are having a wedding instead of just popping in and signing a legal contract, but that is more about a day we want than anything else.

As an aside, there has to be something. Whatever that something is will have to be legally recognised contract. Which means witnesses. Frankly if you get married you can still be Miss Jones if you're Mrs Smith.

Wait, are people arguing they DON'T want to marry because it's patriarchal? I think marriage is associated with patriarchy but you should still get married if it benefits you.

Seriously, what kind of silly hypocrite is a SAHM to a man she cohabits with but then claims marriage is too patriarchal? What do you think cleaning and cooking for a man, providing unpaid labor and raising his children whilst he gives you money is?

It's like OP pointed out. People just pick and choose. If you're against marriage due to "patriarchy", you 100% cannot choose to be a SAHM or part time worker whilst your DP is the breadwinner. Can't do it.

Cambridge registry office specifically state that they don't supply witnesses.

I was always against marriage because of all of the divorces in my family and at the same time me and dh felt we had nothing to prove and it was just a piece of paper that wouldn’t make our love any stronger. We preferred going on lots of holidays than saving up for some lavish wedding which neither of us would enjoy. Me and dh used to joke that we’d been together longer than a lot of married couples. We finally had to give in and did a registry office affair when we had dh and had only close friends and family present.

ds* rather

Marriage may have been a patriarchal institution in the past. It's now inclusive of same sex couples. Religious connotations are expressly forbidden in civil marriages.

Voting used to be restricted to men only.
So did membership of Parliament
So did membership of many (all) universities

Marriage may have once had patriarchal baggage, but civil partnerships have FAR more recent homophobic baggage (deliberately 'othering' as a sop to homophobes who didn't think 'the gays' should have marriage equality)

Oh lovely, another thread bashing women and their choices. Silly women always getting it wrong.

@GinDoll you're right. With my first ex i just ended it and left when he got nasty. No marriage meant no obligation or divorce. This time it's going to cost a lot of money to extract myself and I will have to give my ex more than I get despite him having behaved atrociously and me having responsibility for our DC. Marriage has shafted me not protected me.

Seriously, what kind of silly hypocrite is a SAHM to a man she cohabits with but then claims marriage is too patriarchal? What do you think cleaning and cooking for a man, providing unpaid labor and raising his children whilst he gives you money is?

Whilst I agree that under the current system being an unmarried SAHM is extremely precarious, I seriously disagree with your assertion that being a SAHM is so deeply unfeminist that it makes her mockery of her believing marriage benefits the patriarchy. Being a SAHM is not necessarily an unfeminist choice and it certainly doesn't invalidate her thoughts on feminism.

She's staying at home to raise THEIR children whilst he brings money back to support THEIR family. Both important, both worthwhile and both for mutual benefit. Yes, not being married means she's not protected her financial interest but her being a SAHM is not the problem in itself.

bananafish81

I disagree with you that marriage doesn't still have patriarchal baggage - it does. But that doesn't mean people shouldn't marry for protection, they should!

BuntyII

Again, can someone explain in detail why it's not allowed to discuss unmarried relationships? Why that's such a threat to some posters? We discuss marriage all the time.

There are people who say that saiya yes. I do sympathise with anyone who is bothered by the patriarchal associations of marriage. It's got them, alright. I sympathise less with such people when they say they want a CP instead, what with the homophobia, but that's by the by.

It's true though, denying yourself legal and financial protections that would otherwise benefit you is just about the opposite of feminist. Patriarchy loves it when women do caring work and stay poor because of it.

And this view invariably comes with zero analysis of how badly women as a class are now, not in the past but now being served by cohabitation without marriage. It would be different if women who aren't married were behaving and being treated differently with respect to caring penalties etc... but as a cohort, they are not. And let's be honest, for all the talk on MN of putting alternative protections in place, at absolute best a significant minority aren't. Probably a majority, given how expensive some of those protections are.

As for Cambridge Registry Office, good job it's in a busy area then!

For me the key argument in favour or marriage before children is this:

If I weren't married and DH dropped dead this afternoon then our 2 year old DS would inherit everything. How would that work? I imagine it would be such a faff to sort out trustees etc. My son would have enough money to pay off our mortgage but we might have to sell and move somewhere much smaller as I wouldn't and as a 2 year old DS wouldn't be able to sort it out for me.

As we are married it all goes to me, so much simpler for both DS and I.

I appreciate DH could make a will leaving it all to me but what if he hadn't got round to it or what if he changed his mind and revoked that will?

The very idea of expecting someone to provide financial security for another adult is bizarre.

Why? Because you decided not to get a job?

Still not getting the justification for all this.

Whilst I agree that under the current system being an unmarried SAHM is extremely precarious, I seriously disagree with your assertion that being a SAHM is so deeply unfeminist that it makes her mockery of her believing marriage benefits the patriarchy. Being a SAHM is not necessarily an unfeminist choice and it certainly doesn't invalidate her thoughts on feminism.

She's staying at home to raise THEIR children whilst he brings money back to support THEIR family. Both important, both worthwhile and both for mutual benefit. Yes, not being married means she's not protected her financial interest but her being a SAHM is not the problem in itself.

Disagree 100%. Marriage as an institution financially protects SAHMs so if someone is against marriage in that situation because marriage is "symbolically" patriarchal then they value symbols over substantive financial benefit. In which case, they should be as horrified by the SYMBOL of a woman at home cleaning and childrearing and the SYMBOL of a man working and bringing in all the money, regardless of the financial outcomes.

You can't choose to be a SAHM but then argue that marriage is unacceptable patriarchy. It's hypocrisy pure and simple.

The answer to that osopolar is that you'd have been buggered.

And the reality is that the majority of the population don't have wills. People are crap at this kind of thing. There's no evidence as far as I'm aware that cohabitants are more likely to have wills either, indeed when I was in practice my experience was the opposite. Which is odd because for a lot of married people the intestacy provisions pretty much do the job they want doing. That's the very reason why DH and I didn't bother with wills for quite a while after we got married. Although I suppose most people aren't familiar with intestacy rules either.