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 “?

Why is that a bad thing?Unsuited couples should split whether they're married or not. Living in the midst of a dysfunctional relationship is damaging.

Why should you show respect to the dad by giving your kid his surname? Respect yourself!

Regardless of whether you are married or not you do not have to live in a dysfunctional relationship

Thistle has no children, which makes an enormous difference!

Surely she should have just insisted on the houses being owned in joint names? No need for marriage or formal rights - basic common sense really.
He had a lot more deposit than her; she had a more irregular income history that made the bank reluctant to include her on the mortgage

Who told her that.

I have had no income history and never put a penny into some houses and have never been refused a joint mortgage.

I am on the deeds and the mortgage of my current home despite never having a regular job for several years prior to moving here.

^^ Then she’d be better off married as she’d own a share of the house no matter what nonsense she’d been told.

Me too. I built up the deposit for the first one with dp and was on a high income.The last two sales I hadn't worked for 10 years. No problem at all with getting a joint mortgage.

*Then my father died he and my step mother weren't married despite being together for 25 years.

She couldn't be his next of kin, she couldn't register his death. Without the marriage certificate, in the eyes of the law, she was nothing*

Now this is what I don't get.

Of course she could register the death. That is rubbish.
What would happen to those that didnt have families let alone a surviving spouse. Equally of course she could be down as his next of kin.

DP is going through cancer atm and I am down as his next of kin.
Never occurred to anyone I couldn't be.

I had a life threatening spell in hospital pre dc. Dp was down as next of kin,made all the decisions with the doctors when I wasn't able and was the only one allowed in at times even when my parents drove up for 6 hours. He most certainly did exist. Some really shitty scaremongering on here.

Yes fortunately it's a lot better now than it used to be wrt unmarried partners and medical treatment, I think people are remembering things from 10+ years ago and assuming nothing has improved.

If I had family I particularly didn't want to be involved in any medical decisions and a partner I did, I'd still consider marriage for that reason alone, simply because of the greater certainty it gives. But it's very, very low on the list of benefits that an individual might acquire through marriage. You should really be able to assist in a partner's medical matters without it. I doubt unmarried partners being excluded happens very much at all now.

Divorce itself is relatively cheap, the cost is usually caused by people being unable to agree! I'd suggest that, an unmarried cohabiting couple who shared assets could have an almost equally costly and complex seperation if one or both of them were determined to be difficult about it.

Certainly. And TOLATA claims get expensive very quickly!

I hate the above posts.

From what I can see if you get married the benefits are £50 per week here or £40 per week there. You might get a £3-4000 one off payment if your spouse dies or if you have amassed over a certain amount of money you save on iht.

However you have to compare it against the £35000 divorce, cheapest bill or the current bill of a friend of £170000

Of course you don't have to compare it against a divorce bill, much less a massive one. Indeed you shouldn't, for several reasons:

1. A minority of married couples divorce. Unions are more likely to end on death of one party, and being married is usually more advantageous there. If you're looking at probabilities, this is the way to go, on current best information.

1. If you do get divorced, 35k and 170k bills aren't compulsory, nor even average, and it's perfectly possible to do it amicably for three figures.

1. You are at best no more likely to separate if married than if cohabiting, and this is kindly assuming that the better stats for splitting re married couples can be explained away. This means you risk costs of separation whether married or not. It's just one of the risks you take getting into a serious relationship.

1. The main legal expense in divorce is in dealing with jointly owned assets and children, both of which can be and are extremely expensive to deal with when the couple aren't married. If one of you wants to be a complete dick about contact and go to court at the drop of a hat, you can do that whether married or not.

1. When you talk about £30 here and £40 there, and minimised it, the other side to that coin is inheritance tax. Which can be a lot more...

None of these are reasons to get married if you don't want to and it doesn't otherwise advantage you, btw. They're just reasons why your argument is silly.

How beneficial or otherwise marriage is to an individual varies massively and will turn on the facts. It just isn't true to suggest that you'll only get £40 or £50 here and there. For many people the financial benefits are huge.

Equally, not all divorces cost a fortune and not all cohabitees walk away from relationship breakdowns cost free. If you are married to an obstructive arsehole your divorce is likely to be more difficult. If you live with and share assets with an obstructive arsehole your seperation is likely to be more difficult. The issue is the obstructive arsehole not the process.

There isn't a "right" answer but what threads like this hopefully do is encourage the odd person who might not otherwise have done so to look into things and assess their own situation with more knowledge.

A minority of married couples divorce

I don't think 50% is a minority

Nor do I. The divorce rates are rather less than 50% though, as per the ONS.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/divorce/bulletins/divorcesinenglandandwales/2016

42% estimated.

@LoniceraJaponica I'm not against marriage but I do resent having to get married in order to access the same benefits as a married couple (IHT etc). As it's much cheaper to get married than draw up complicated wills, we, like @yogadrone, will shortly be marrying with minimal fuss at the lowest possible cost!

I think some women who love their partners and want DC but are not sure of their partner’s reliability or commitment decide to prioritise becoming a parent over proposing (or waiting for a proposal) and marriage. Perhaps thinking that if they don’t ttc and the relationship breaks down they may not find someone else to have DC with.

And that some men are willing to become fathers but are well aware of and don’t want the financial commitment of marriage (fathers can avoid paying maintenance).

So almost half of couples cope just fine without being married.

A lot of couples are together and perfectly happy but have different views on getting married - they have a surprise baby and continue not to be married. Is one partner not wanting to be married enough to split a family up over? Some people worry about the planning/cost etc of a wedding.

Can fathers avoid paying maintenance if they are named on the birth certificate? I was not aware of that and in my line of work (finance), I never came across this.

I don’t agree with loving together a certain amount of time or having children should give you the same rights as getting married as it takes away choice for people who actively don’t want to get married. You shouldn’t be forced into that position defacto IMO

So almost half of couples cope just fine without being married.

What's the basis for this, what does cope fine mean? Are you coping fine if you spent six decades happily unmarried with never a cross word, then had to pay IHT when your partner died? Most people cope fine when they're still together. Aside from a few tax things, it's when you either split up or one of you dies that marriage becomes more significant. One of those things is going to happen sooner or later. Unless you die simultaneously in an accident or whatever but most people don't.

@LoniceraJaponica I'm not against marriage but I do resent having to get married in order to access the same benefits as a married couple (IHT etc). As it's much cheaper to get married than draw up complicated wills, we, like @yogadrone, will shortly be marrying with minimal fuss at the lowest possible cost!

This is a much more sensible approach than pretending that said benefits don't exist, or should be weighed against theoretical inflated divorce costs, or that people on low incomes should just make investments instead.

I don’t think people object to having rights though, it is more the idea of being joined together as one person that is an issue for many.

A lot of couples are together and perfectly happy but have different views on getting married - they have a surprise baby and continue not to be married. Is one partner not wanting to be married enough to split a family up over? Some people worry about the planning/cost etc of a wedding.

If they won't marry then presumably they would be happy to put in place a cohabitation agreement to legally make financial provision for the more vulnerable partner who ends up sacrificing earning potential through any time taken off from work to have or raise a child, in the event of separation or death. They would presumably ensure that all pensions and insurance policies named their partner as the beneficiary and do everything possible to put in place as much provision as is legally possible without being legally married.

Of course, a cohabitation agreement costs more to draw up than a civil marriage, but if they're adamant they don't want to marry, then they should agree to put as much security as possible in place for the partner who will lose out career wise by having a child. Which is usually the woman.

If they won't marry and won't put any financial provision in place, then that would suggest to me that they're an uncaring arsehole and that would indeed be something worth breaking up over.

I do not want "protection"
Neither do I want a contract for (effectively) sex and money
I do not want to give away half my house should I stop wanting to have sex with the man I am with. And I want that choice. Not unreasonable.

If I did want these things I have the option of signing a legal contract - ie marriage.