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 “?

Agree re IHT - but it is a risk you can choose to take.

It is the "he doesn't think you are good enough to marry you" attitude I hate.

“So if you're married you can walk off with chunks of your other half's pension? That's hardly fair- get your own!”

If you’re a SAHP who isn’t earning and therefore not able to build up your own pension entitlement then yes, absolutely, neonyellowshoes.

Many women risk ending up in retirement poverty for precisely this reason. It’s also why defined benefit pension schemes typically have a widow’s pension entitlement which continues after the primary policy holder’s death. These policies were typically held by high earners - mostly men - who supported a non working wife and family on a single salary.

If you are an unmarried SAHP your spouse should be paying into a pension for you. But how many of them actually do this?

Not only women benefit from marriage, or not getting married dependent on the individuals circumstance.

My partner are marrying for the financial/legal benefits. The person who gains the most from this is my dp.

adaline your chidren are not financially protected by marriage.

They are in the UK when it comes to things like widowed parents' allowance. I'm not talking about the parents' individual inheritances, but if a child is a minor and their unmarried parent dies, the remaining parent is not entitled to that allowance from the government.

The maximum is nearly £120 a week, payable until your youngest child is eighteen. That's nearly £500 a month which is a considerable amount of money for many families.

Also please can the unmarrieds stop asking for legal protection without signing the contract

This ^ Thank you.

There was another thread regarding this on MN a couple of weeks ago, question was asked slightly differently though. People getting very self righteous about marriage only being a piece of paper.

I realised some time ago that if that is your view of getting married, then, don't get married like you weren't going to anyway.

However, the remark that remains with me is this: 'don't wait until the house burns down to complain that you didn't take out an insurance policy and then try and claim discrimination because you weren't insured.'

I wondered if it was a last ditch attempt to keep the relationship together i.e. we've done the living together thing, we've done the kids thing, we've done the making up after a period of difficulties thing, the only thing we haven't tried is the marriage thing.

It's hard to go to one of these kind of ceremonies and keep a straight face.

However, the remark that remains with me is this: 'don't wait until the house burns down to complain that you didn't take out an insurance policy and then try and claim discrimination because you weren't insured.'

This, with bells on. That's a really good way of putting it, actually.

It is the "he doesn't think you are good enough to marry you" attitude I hate.

If she is the more financially vulnerable partner, and their situation is one where she and their children would derive financial protection from marriage, but he does not want to get married, (which is a very very common situation on MN)

...if he is happy to make appropriate financial provision through a cohabitation agreement, then that's one thing

..if he WON'T do that, then yeah, I think that does say something quite significant about how much he cares about her

The whole expectation that a woman is waiting her whole life to get married is so depressing.

FWIW my DH was so eager to get married, he’d have married anyone. It is not only women who think like that.

Maybe women have this attitude because there is such a high divorce rate in the UK. In MN I read all the time the refrain LTB.

Some people try to work things through and are told they are stupid and dysfunctional relationships are no good etc but there are different levels of relationships and walking away when the going gets tough or when a younger/richer model appears might be better replaced with trying to make things work and might make a lot of the contents of this thread irrelevant.

For the sake of the pedantically minded, of course a cheap registry office contractual marriage is cheaper than having a child! However, some couples with children still want the 'wedding' and not just the contract and why not?
Our ability to get married is not governed by a body clock, unlike our fertlity.

I don't know where you get the idea that a wedding costs £229251, which is the average cost of raising a child to 18 in the uk is anywhere near the average costs of a wedding in the uk of £33884.

Tbh my will cost more than the legal part of our wedding did, and the rest is still all under 2k. Good push chair costs that these days

Nobody pays 2k for a pushchair!
And Mine cost nothing, it was given to me.

You are of course forgetting the expenditure over time, a wedding costs whatever you say the average is in a single day. I will hardly miss 229, whatever you say over 18 years. They are incomparable from this stance.

Also we got married on a week day in a church with 33 guests including our relatives. That can cost just about nothing too by the way so don't assume church weddings are out unless you are rich either. What costs money is fancy flowers and all the other bits and pieces which you don't need unless you are particularly materialistic.

So we've finally established that having a baby costs more than getting married, which can be done for a couple of hundred quid. Sanity prevails!

I'd rather have a quiet registry office wedding and be sorted legally than never get married because I can't afford a "party".

It's not pedantic to point out you were talking absolute, steaming shite aranchini. There is no non-ludicrous way to construe your claim in order to make it true. Yes, it's possible to spend more on a wedding than you'd need to in order to raise a child. If you want. There's always someone who'll empty your wallet for you. It's just that this is completely irrelevant and doesn't prove your point. Having a kid can't be cheap. Getting married can be. The end.

Well said adaline

I get irritated by people who say they can't afford to get married. What they really mean is that they can't afford a big, flashy wedding.

You can get married for £112 in our local registry office if you want a no frills wedding.

You are of course forgetting the expenditure over time, a wedding costs whatever you say the average is in a single day. I will hardly miss 229, whatever you say over 18 years. They are incomparable from this stance.

Nobody is forgetting anything. A wedding can cost less than £200. A baby is never going to cost that little.

Aranchini, that £229,251 over 18 years is £12,736 per year, every year. Times however many children you have. More if you support them through university or let them live at home after they turn 18. Considerably more if you send them to private school.

That “average” cost of a wedding in the UK at £33,884 represents less than three years’ worth of raising one child. So that is your real comparator.

However:

1. I have my doubts about whether that figure is accurate. I ended up not getting married in the UK but that for us was about how much it would have cost to get married in the (expensive) venue of our dreams, with over 100 guests. We have a big budget and a generous parental contribution and decided that was an unreasonable amount to spend on a wedding.

1. Obviously you can have a “proper” church wedding and reception for much, much less than that.

1. If a couple is spending upwards of £30k on a wedding it’s highly likely their parents are paying for all or part of it.

So when you take into account how much people actually spend, and how long they typically save for a wedding, I reckon the cost of paying for a wedding and the cost of raising one child over the same period of time are actually pretty comparable.

^For the sake of the pedantically minded, of course a cheap registry office contractual marriage is cheaper than having a child! However, some couples with children still want the 'wedding' and not just the contract and why not?
Our ability to get married is not governed by a body clock, unlike our fertlity.^

So if having DC is going to leave you the more vulnerable partner financially, and marriage would offer you protection, why wouldn't you want to get the legals sorted quickly?

You can still have the contract AND the wedding at a later date!

I know loads of people who did that. They got legally married when starting TTC / when pregnant before the baby was born, with a view to having a wedding celebration later on, when they could afford it

Why would you want to sacrifice legal protection if you're in a situation where it would benefit you for the cost of £120 - you can still have the wedding later on.

Alternatively, you spend £800+ on a legal cohabitation agreement and hope you don't die before you're married and your kids can't access bereavement allowances.

If you would be financially disadvantaged by having DC in any way, and are in a situation where marriage would confer financial protections in the event of a separation, then I fundamentally don't get why you wouldn't put a cohabitation agreement in place to ensure at least some financial provision, if you're insistent that you don't want to get married.

Of course, a civil marriage is cheaper than a cohabitation agreement, but if you're adamant you don't want a marriage without a Big Wedding, then that's your choice.

If you have DC with your live-in partner @aranchini, do you have a cohabitation agreement in place, in addition to life insurance and wills?

If not, why not?

Yes you are being extremely unreasonable, I had my daughter at age 20 and I’m not married to my partner I’m not hurting anyone and couldn’t Care less whether I marry my partner or not, my daughter is loved so much by both of us so very much, it doesn’t matter if we’re married or whether we plan on marriage in the future my child is loved happy and healthy and personally I think that’s all that matters. I’d rather spend my money on my little girl than on a wedding. She’s not loosing out on anything because we don’t share the same last name. How people choose to live their lives married or not, children no children it really isn’t any of our business there’s far more going on in the world than worrying about something so minor like this

Incidentally, we need to think a bit more about this 33.8k as average claim. I googled average UK wedding cost and was presented with a rather large variety of figures from the past year, 33.8k being the highest and 17.9k lowest.

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/average-british-wedding-cost-uk-27000-hitched-venue-honeymoon-food-london-midlands-a7937551.html

www.telegraph.co.uk/financial-services/currency-exchange/international-money-transfers/average-cost-wedding/

www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/bazaar-brides/a19478376/average-cost-of-uk-wedding/

Not that this makes any difference to the fact that you can marry for very little, of course.

@hannahgracedunning23 have you read the full thread?

Tokyo you're scaremongering again.

I will get my partners pension should he cark it plus an 8x salary lump sum and the mortgage paid off. It really wasn't that hard to organise.

Unless your relationship doesn’t work out, in which case he can walk away, remove your name as beneficiary from all of the above and make a new will.

Absolutely spot on!! I have two kids with a man I’ve been with for 23 yrs not married. Marriage is such an outdated concept,move on ladies because a band of gold is not a measure of your self worth.