AIBU to think why did this couple just get married

[Gin96]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51676780

Anyone mentioned widow’s share of workplace pension?

I’ve just had financial advice if my husband dies I get his whole work pension pot tax free, I can have it as a lump sum or monthly payments, hopefully he’s around for a while yet though.

KTB!

According to the law, I don't count," she said. "I even had to register Nigel as 'single'.
I just don't understand why she would expect him to be registered as anything other than single. There are enough occasions where, in a 9 year period, we are asked for our status to know that he is single.

"It was a spit in the face for nearly a decade spent together."
If you decide you don't want to marry or have a Civil partnership then surely it is acceptable to expect not to have the benefits those laws provide.

Marriage is an institution that originated in the church.

It really isn't. The institution of marriage existed millennia before churches and Christianity.

I’ve just had financial advice if my husband dies I get his whole work pension pot tax free,

I was listening to a phone-in on Valentine's Day about proposals and one lady was saying she and her partner had just been given this advice and he turned to her and said "well best we do it then". She said "that's not very romantic", to which he replied "it's not about love, it's about tax!"

Exactly even if you have Wills set up you will pay an awful lot of tax which should be going to you or your partner and your children, you should all get financial advice so if anything awful does happen at least you will be financially prepared.

@Hirsutefirs yes if married you will get dh work pension

My friend did

I didn’t , something to do with age of dh when died. He was 37 - think it was 45 - but this was 9yrs ago

And even tho had paid ni for years

Laws may have changed now

They don’t want to marry due to very messy parental divorces on both sides, which has affected how they feel about marriage- I’m not saying that they’re doing the right thing, but I do understand now.

This is why I didn’t want to. XP and I were together for twenty years, and we have two children - it was a serious commitment, and we still get on well. When we got together, I had every intention of staying with him permanently, but because of my background the thought of marrying has always made me deeply uncomfortable in ways I can’t easily explain.

The relationship did eventually end and I am with a new partner now; love him deeply but still really struggle with the idea of being married.

I understand more clearly now that this is risky in ways I naively didn’t see as a younger woman. But for me it has never been about being right-on, or not fully committed to the relationship.

My work pension paperwork says a spouse or civil partner who survives me when I die after retirement, will get half my pension as a widow’s pension.

Someone I just live with won’t get that.

Same here. We had to send off our marriage certificate for me to be the beneficiary of my husband’s pension if he dies and the same for him to get mine. No certificate, no survivors’ pension.

And wills are no protection if a partnership breaks up.
A will can be changed or superseded at any time without knowledge of the beneficiary.

I was not very assertive as a young woman in my mid-twenties but have been very grateful over the years that I dug my heels in and refused to progress a long-term, living together relationship unless marriage was on the cards. I had some savings and my then boyfriend wanted to buy a property together. I had always wanted us to be married and had also, thankfully, read a couple of newspaper articles about unmarried relationships breaking down (no internet advice back then) so my instincts told me to say no. He was/is the love of my life, but I also made it clear that, after nearly nine years, I was ready to move on if marriage wasn’t on the cards.

Not romantic, huh? God knows how I found the balls to do it as I was otherwise very dependent on him! We did marry, very happily, and he now out-earns me by many times my salary. Marriage was definitely the right path for me.

MaybeDoctor

But what happens when you divorce and he can afford fancy lawyers to tie you in knots and waste what little money you have.

You might get 1/2 the house (which you would have got anyway) but you will spend tens of thousands getting it.

Why would you? My divorce was civilised and finances were sorted out very easily, my legal bill was three figures.

You were lucky.

The people I know who have ended up divorcing have ended up with huge bills

Friend who is currently going through a divorce will end up with less than if she hadn’t actually got married

He gets to keep his business that she helped him set up, he gets to keep his pension, he gets to keep the btl properties and a flat that he has moved into and she is left with the family home which will have to be sold to pay her £50k solicitors bill.

He has stalled her at every opportunity (nearly 3 years in now)

I haven’t ever seen a divorce that has been amicable.

You weigh things up and make your own decision.

You don’t automatically get ‘half the family home’ if you are unmarried. That depends on being joint tenants in the property. If the ownership is set up in other ways a lower-earning woman could find herself walking away with very little, as it would depend on what she had contributed to the property.

Not the first time this has been pointed out to you oliver, but mostly in divorces it's the kids and assets that take up the time. The majority of divorces are uncontested, ie both parties want to divorce.

If you have children and/or property with a partner, you're giving them the opportunity to use the courts to be a twat. Particularly the dc. Not marrying will give you precisely zero protection against abusive court proceedings. It may still be better for a person than being married anyway, but not because it eliminates the possibility of stalling or malicious applications. Take it from someone who's seen a fair few of them in practice. If you want to protect yourself from that possibility, don't have children or joint assets with a partner.

Additionally, it's possible for one person to get much more than half the house when married, which is of course a reason why some people won't do it.

Currently you can make claims against a deceased partner's estate under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 as either a person maintained by the deceased (s 1(1)(e)) of a cohabitant of two years or more (a 1(1)(ba)).
Under the Fatal Accident Act 1976, cohabiting couples of at least two years can claim in the same way a married couple or couple in a civil partnership would.
The SC ruled that not allowing cohabiting couples with children to access NI's widowed parent allowance was discrimination and issued a declaration of incompatibility with Articles 14 and 8 of the ECHR, and Article 1 First Protocol property rights. The co-raising of children was the important factor, not the marriage or lack thereof. The HoL have also ruled that treating cohabiting couples differently to married couples did amount to discrimination. Historically these laws were to promote and uphold marriage, but it's becoming so irrelevant with the divorce rate and people electing to not marry, spouses earning the same and people having fewer children so less of a need to be a SAHP that the Law Commission's reform proposals are being brought in.
There's now a bill going through parliament right now to give cohabiting couples the same protections as married couples when one party dies along with some other protections, if anyone is interested.
Sorry if it's already been mentioned.

You were lucky

No I wasn’t lucky. I didn’t choose to marry an arsehole and neither of us had dishonest solicitors who created drama or conflict to swell their bills. We were both crystal clear about what we considered fair. That isn’t luck, it’s being fair and rational human beings.

You don’t automatically get ‘half the family home’ if you are unmarried

You do if you own half the house.

Friend owned 1/2 the family home, 1/2 the business, 1/2 btl property, 1/2 the flat her stbexh is living in.
She has ended up with the family home. She has had to sign over everything else to him.
She won’t get any of his pension, or and CM as he apparently now only earns a pittance and is saying he will need the money from his pension to live on as btl properties are not a steady income. (He also has a cash business so no way of proving what he actually does earn)

We worked it out that if she hadn’t married 1/2 of everything would have been more and she wouldn’t have had any legal fees.

Even if they were still connected through the btl properties at least she would have had a bit of an income and most importantly he wouldn’t have been able to drag this out for nearly 3 years.

As it is she is facing having to sell the family home and either downsize or go into rented as being severely disabled (he caused her disability) she is living on disability benefits.

All this talk of being able to access your husbands pension and how being married gives you some protection is not a given and i think that for some people living together if you don’t have your name on everything is not protecting yourself. But equally getting married doesn’t automatically mean you are protected and entitled as well.

Another person Dp knows has thrown in the towel and walked away with just his legal fees paid for because he just wanted the divorce over. (Last time I heard his fees were heading towards £85000 and will have probably risen since then)

Maybe I just know people who have had a hard time and where the protection that marriage is supposed to bring is thrown out the window when it gets to court

There's now a bill going through parliament right now to give cohabiting couples the same protections as married couples when one party dies along with some other protections, if anyone is interested

The bill concerned is a private members bill that was introduced in the House of Lords. Unless it gets government backing it is unlikely to become law.

Yes, the people you know aren't a representative spectrum if you've never known an amicable or cheap divorce. And honestly, if you own property and/or have minor DC with someone, they absolutely can be a twat over the courts and not marrying them won't protect you from that. I've seen unmarried couples where the costs for contact proceedings were well into the five figures and quite likely totalled approaching or into six between them (obv you only see your own client's bill but if the other side has been represented throughout as well then you'll be able to take a good guess at theirs).

People certainly should do their research and not assume that marriage/CP is their best option or protection. But not because it'll cost enormous sums to divorce that can be avoided by cohabiting.

My dds will inherit my pension taX free if I die before 75. So would anyone else I left it to. Has nothing to do with being married