To think that some married women on here think they are better than unmarried women?

[malificent7]

After reading the thread about legal rights, marriage and birth certificates I was struck by the patronising way in which some married women spoke to those who are cohabiting or not married.
True married women have better rights but it was the way in which the relationships of unmarried women were dismissed as lesser and these women were being sneered at.

Someone told a woman who had been cohabiting that her relationship meant nothing and that if you are not married you are single.
REALLY? I am not married but I am not single. I don't even live with the guy but why is my relationship seen as less valid? Some married people hate each other and don't have the guts to leave. Some of the best love affairs involve people who live miles apart.
I don't like the fact that I have to put single on a form . Why can I not be in a relationship?

Ok, If you are married you have some legal rights and security that the unmarried have but shouldn't we question this? Why should we make vows especially if you don't believe in the laws of marriage? Also, it was originally a religious ceremony..I don't believe in God and I am not a commodity to be given away by my dad to another male.

Does it lead to stability? My dp is divorced. The marriage vows didn't stop things from falling apart.

Marriage can be a great thing but the tone in the last thread was old fashioned and practically berated women for not managing to get a man to marry them. Surely there has to be other options if you don't believe in marriage ? It is a patriarchal tradition after all to do with male prperty rights. Also, many men want pre nuptuals as they are now wise to gold digging wives.

I think you can have some marriages which have less love than some cohabiting relationships. Why is one type of relationship more valid? I find it all very old fashioned.

Judging by the number of men who don't leave their wives a dime on divorce, I am not convinced by the stability argument.

yetanotherspartacus because it would be authoritarian

Bollock. If you want a wedding, white dress, marriage, cake, certificate or whatever you can still have it. I just don't think it should be necessary. But it is up to people to secure legal protections for any joint property, etc. That should be made easier and more flexible.

Blue the only sneering I've come across is on here.

If people are dumb enough to be swayed into life making decisions by what they put on a form you could argue it could give people a false sense of security by ticking married.

Being married doesn't guarantee you the same size house you currently live in,a good pension,zero debt,means to support yourself,savings for shitty times....

I object to being called single. I haven't been single for 30 years.There should be a box for cohabiting.

There is on lots of things. There is on car insurance forms, my employer's death in service benefit form (DP gets 3 x my salary if I snuff it before I retire), my occupational pension form (DP will be living the life of Riley with that extra £150 a month), he benefits from the health insurance scheme provided by my employer.

Not asking it to educate just to be accurate. So you want relationship status banned from all forms?

Depends. If it's required, put it on there. Your legal marital status, is required sometimes. But it's your legal status that's required. So no need to change it.

If you martial status is not require, it shouldn't be on a form. And is most cases probably isn't.

Smug married couples, maybe just happy

When you have a poster stating they wouldn’t let their children play with children of couples who are not married and seem to want a couple to have a marriage certificate to prove that either of them is not a paedophile and other stating that just because you have a house, business, children cars on the driveway and a living relationship that has outlasted any marriage we have known but according to some that is nothing because we never got the bit of paper then I think the term smug married is appropriate

Your legal status would still be on there. It would also be clear that you weren't single. Actually come to think of it,I think I've ticked relationship status boxes on a fair few forms. Maybe times are changing.

Emotionally of course I’m in a relationship but the law isn’t concerned with emotions and I think that’s right

Exactly. It isn't a moral judgment on the quality of your relationship, but rather a legal judgment on the contract that you have entered into.

As the higher earner in our relationship, I was entirely happy to enter into that contract with my DH and so we got married. We have chosen to have a family together, and although he still works, I think it's fair to say we have prioritised my career. The contract between us gives him some protection if anything were to happen to me, and I feel that's right and fair.

If DH died or if we split up at some point, I'd like to think I would be able to have another relationship (if I so chose) without being forced into a legally binding contract that would potentially compromise the rights of my existing DC. If I chose to enter that contract again by getting married, that would be different, but no way should a legal contract be the default situation.

If you did go down that path, at what point do people think a relationship should become legally binding? After seeing each other for a couple of years? When you move in together? When you buy a house together? After a child is born? Surely, the sensible point at which to declare that a binding contract has been formed is the point at which the two people involved choose to sign that contract?

I'm the only one in my social circle and family who is married

Whereas my social circle is made up of married couples and one (very) long term co habiting couple (25 + years, no idea why they aren’t married, none of us cares). BBQ at ours last night, 9 couples plus us, all except the pre mentioned unmarried couple married over 25 years, all on our first marriage apart from one of the men who was briefly married before. Of ALL the weddings I’ve attended since I was a child, only two have ended in divorce.

@ PaulDacreRimsGeese
There will be a massive difference in the finance proceedings with dc present depending on whether there was a marriage or not.
In the unmarried scenario, having custody of the children is irrelevant as to how the assets are split, as jointly owned assets are dealt with under civil / property law, not family law. In the married scenario, custody of the children is the key determinant to the financial settlement.
Not to mention that your spouse can petition for divorce under "unreasonable behaviour", you cannot realistically oppose this in court but you still will be made to pay all their legal costs (north of 5K in my case).

Thatsfuckingshit

But the " kids and assets" has nothing to do with being married.
Being in a long term co habiting relationship often too involves assets and kids, and may require legal help to separate.

The divorce part is the easy bit.

Totally agree - if you want legal rights, get married. IF you don’t completely fine but it’s totally unreasonable to expect to acquire them otherwise. The choice is there for you and you are choosing not to do it.

Ok put unmarried instead of single,not hard.

What legal rights?

Militants on either side the way I see it! It’s not a competition but I’m interested in the number of co habiters who had a proposal would they turn it down?
For me it was about building together, it was about being a partnership that is recognised in law, to give us both the security for everything that we have worked hard for. It means if one of us dies, we won’t have to fight legalities, which safeguards my DD.I also really still like the idea of marriage, for me it isn’t about religion but just a sealing of the love we have.

@ PaulDacreRimsGeese
^There will be a massive difference in the finance proceedings with dc present depending on whether there was a marriage or not.
In the unmarried scenario, having custody of the children is irrelevant as to how the assets are split, as jointly owned assets are dealt with under civil / property law, not family law. In the married scenario, custody of the children is the key determinant to the financial settlement.^
Not to mention that your spouse can petition for divorce under "unreasonable behaviour", you cannot realistically oppose this in court but you still will be made to pay all their legal costs (north of 5K in my case).

There can be. It's also the case that if you have jointly owned property, an unmarried partner can enjoy themselves making all kinds of frivolous applications. I know this because I saw it in practice. Additionally, it's occasionally possible for unmarried partners to secure orders in relation to the other's property after splitting, because of the children, but it's rare.

It's incorrect that you automatically have to pay all the spouse's legal costs if they petition for unreasonable behaviour though. We had at least one case where that didn't happen. It also is possible to defend an unreasonable behaviour petition, there was a recent and high profile case of someone doing just that, successfully. Although in fairness to you, this is a very new development and certainly the practice in the past decade or so has been solicitors advising clients not to defend.

But the point to take away from this is that if you have property and in particular children with someone, regardless of whether you marry them, they absolutely can use that for vexatious and frivolous litigation. And sometimes they do. If you want to protect yourself against that, the only way is not to have kids or property with anyone.

Not married, don't want to be. Don't see the point and yes, I'm at home with the kids more than my partner, though we both work. We don't need marriage to confirm anything and we don't have assists to split either as we're stuck in generation rent. If a civil partnership was open to heterosexual couples we may consider it but it's not. And the more I learnt about the origins of marriage the more it made me want to 🤢. Just because I'm not married, doesn't make my relationship less valid, and as for the legalities, I'm happy just how they are.
People spent too much time judging others instead of getting on with their own lives!

Alexa you put it well.

Also the claim earlier that a married household is a better environment for children to be brought up in is absolute nonsense!

Why would a civil partnership be more acceptable to you than a marriahe chalky, given the problematic homophobic associations of CP? Both institutions have some rather dodgy history.

The whole point of this TAAT is that the OP completely misconstrued the other thead. Why is one type of relationship more valid? No body was saying that. No body was saying boyfriend/girlfriend (no marriage) relationships have no personal value. It was a thread about the LAW. Now you've just gone and created the exact same thread as the initial thread and it's ended up yet again about people being offended about boxes on forms.

The problem with co habiting is that it is unclear when that is a relationship status. Plenty of couples don't have sex anymore but still claim to be in a relationship. Plenty of married couples sleep apart. I have a friend who decided to buy an expensive house with his good friend. Like a house share type of thing. They live together in the house, don't have sex and sleep in different bedrooms. They are not in a relationship with each other. They are clearly co habiting though. It would not be right if the friend has the same rights and obligations as marriage.

The only thing claiming that you are in a relationship is marriage. So either get married or fight for a relationship contract that means the exact same thing but has different wording on it. To me it's silly though, like saying you want to buy a potato that is called a broccoli. But if it floats your boat go for it.

@PaulDacreRimsGeese
I am in no way an expert, speaking from the personal experience only - which unfortunately seems to be always a couple of months earlier to some ground-breaking case law.
I think it would be fair to say that a lot of approaches and precedents in family law is based on the traditional" model - a semi-absent "breadwinner" parent (most likely male) with good income, one "stay at home" parent (most likely female) who lost all skills and has no income potential etc. This area is where fairness could be found.
If the situation is non-standard, all bets are off. Interestingly, my good friend went through divorce roughly at the same time as I did (also a high-earning mother who never stopped working, roughly the same financial layout too), and while the residence proceedings were eerily similar, the financial orders were polar opposites.

Oliversmumsarmy
Judging from another thread, the irony there is that that particular poster doesn't appear to be married or even have children yet.

I think it's about choice @PaulDacreRimsGeese - I believe couples should have the choice for either. Most of my LGBT friends have all opted to convert to marriage and I can completely understand why, especially when there are children involved because it does give more rights than a civil partnership and they should have had that option from the very beginning. For me personally though (and after already having one marriage I was widowed from) I wouldn't want to do that again. It's about choice.

The divorce part is the easy bit.

No it's not. Assert, kids all that is part of divorce. And most divorces can't be done for £85. And you are forgetting the emotional impact.

Yes unmarried couples have these issues. That doesn't make divorce, easy.