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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to not understand getting marrying years after having kids and living together

380 replies

Lcats · 09/10/2020 17:47

What I really mean here is please help me understand. I just have never been exposed to this in real life. However I keep coming across such threads on mumsnet.

What I don't understand is - surely raising your child(ren) together is the ultimate commitment. So for people who marry say five years after having two children - does it nevertheless signify a new step in the relationship? Or is it merely a delayed celebration of the fact that you are already de facto married?

Among my friends those to whom being married mattered for whatever reason married before having kids, or after falling pregnant or having their first child. I have a few friends to whom being married never seemed to matter so they live together for years without. So I have no one to ask in everyday life.

OP posts:
BobBobBobbing · 09/10/2020 19:02

Me and dh only got married because we got our pension statements through and we realised how much money we'd get if the other dropped dead. And more importantly how much we'd not get if we didn't get married Grin Wedding took place 6 weeks later with just our kids and witnesses.

Marriage just didn't seem important until we saw in black and white the cold hard pounds signs attached to the marriage certificate. Given I went home with him after a drunken night out and never left we weren't particularly worried about commitment, but that pension statement really highlighted how other people who didn't know us were in charge of the pension money would view our relationship

caringcarer · 09/10/2020 19:06

If your partner died you would not have right to plan their funeral as not next of kin.

You might assume if you have lived together a long time this would give you tights but unless you are.named in a will you would not automatically inherit.

speakout · 09/10/2020 19:06

Oh are approaching retiremant age, have adult chlidren, been together 25 years and toying with the idea of marrige.
Purely for financial reasonons.
Although we have most things tied up- joint names, wills , pension beneficary etc, we feel it would give us an added layer of security.

The only thing that puts us off is the fuss and palaver. We can't be arsed with any idea of celebration/posh clothes/weeping relatives.
At some point soon we will bugger off and have a quick ceremony or a civil partnership - in day clothes, no celebrations, no guests- Covid is perfect. The whole thing is quite meaningless to us.

Heatherjayne1972 · 09/10/2020 19:07

In a ‘traditional’ set up I.e. woman is a sahm or works part time it makes financial sense to be married should you split up since all the assets are split
However I have a suspicion that men often aren’t bothered about marriage because they’d have to split their assets. If there’s no legal ( marriage) contract they don’t automatically have to

ThinkAboutItTomorrow · 09/10/2020 19:07

Inheritance tax.

Married we pay nothing if one of us dies, unmarried it'll cost us £100k+

GertrudeCB · 09/10/2020 19:09

We did it because we realised the legal implications.

riotlady · 09/10/2020 19:09

@VinylDetective

It appears to be as incomprehensible to you, OP, as it is to me that women agree to have children without being married.
I think a lot of this way of thinking stems from an old fashioned idea that the man will earn more, the woman will go part time or become a SAHM and therefore she has to “protect herself”. My partner works minimum wage, had minimal pension and we don’t own a house. When I qualify next year I’ll be earning more than him and won’t be staying at home with our daughter. Is it really incomprehensible that we didn’t rush down the aisle when I found out I was pregnant, or are you just unable to imagine scenarios outside of the very narrow set of circumstances with which you’re familiar?
speakout · 09/10/2020 19:10

You might assume if you have lived together a long time this would give you tights

AIBU to not understand getting marrying years after having kids and living together
UsernameNotValid · 09/10/2020 19:10

I had no desire to get married but DH wanted to and I felt like it was a fair expectation anyway. We didn't make a big thing of it.

We've been together 20 years and married 6 (or 7? 🤦‍♀️) - our DC are 7 and 14.

Original poster
Lcats · 09/10/2020 19:11

I understand there are legal protections.

But if the couple finds this fact important then why delay the marriage for years?

OP posts:
VinylDetective · 09/10/2020 19:12

@Lcats

I understand there are legal protections.

But if the couple finds this fact important then why delay the marriage for years?

Why not read the thread? Plenty of people have explained their wide and varying reasons. This faux wide eyed innocence is quite tedious.
hammeringinmyhead · 09/10/2020 19:14

It's a pain in the arse organising a wedding. Especially if you have family expectations and all that jazz. I have a toddler and there's no way I'd have the mental energy to organise one for at least a few years. It was a lot easier when we were 24, childless and not knackered all the time.

Aridane · 09/10/2020 19:14

Just never got round to it
Too busy working and any spare money was spent on kids / house etc.
We literally had no spare money to put on the wedding dinner
We would have happily got married in a registry office but families on both sides would 100 percent expect at least a sit down meal at a hotel etc
We have large immediate families , lots of siblings all with 2/3 children each.

In which case the current restrictions on gatherings etc present the perfect opportunity for a legal and guess free simple marriage ceremony - the equivalent of elopement

Original poster
Lcats · 09/10/2020 19:16

Thanks for your answer!

A bit tongue in cheek but if your families expect to be entertained to such a high standard they should be able to babysit while you nip to the office to register the marriage :)

Lots of my friends eloped. I didn’t have a very grand event either.

OP posts:
BrieAndChilli · 09/10/2020 19:18

When you are young you dont think about the future, you are naive about how protected you are by having kids with someone etc etc but as you get older and you see other people in situations that could be avoided if that had been married you start to realise how important being married is from a legal and financial perspective
Eg
Next of kin. If your partner was in a coma you wouldn’t be able to make the decision to keep him alive, that would instead fall to the parents or a sibling.
Tax reasons - especially inheritance tax. You wouldn’t be able to have everything tax free if they died. Possibly have to sell the house to pay tax.

BobBobBobbing · 09/10/2020 19:21

@Lcats

I understand there are legal protections.

But if the couple finds this fact important then why delay the marriage for years?

Because when we got together and started a family we had bugger all assets. As and when we did get assets we tied things up legally to cover circumstances like death. Over time we had promotions and our pensions ended up being worth quite a bit but could only be paid to a spouse, not a partner. So we got a pension statement that highlighted this and took the only action available to secure that protection.
Friendsoftheearth · 09/10/2020 19:21

Having children is by far the biggest commitment out of the two, but for legal and financial reasons it is better for a woman to be married if she is not fabulously independently wealthy. Marriage is especially important if the mother is not working full time, and does not have a sizeable income stream of her own. Especially important around who owns the house, and assets etc.

Wearywithteens · 09/10/2020 19:21

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn at the poster's request.

DivGirl · 09/10/2020 19:22

No one has mentioned that there are benefits available to you if your spouse dies (bereavement support allowance) which you are not eligible for if you aren't married. No matter how long you were together or how many kids you had.

TheMenopausalPinkHairedWitch · 09/10/2020 19:22

Lazysundayafternoons we got married in 2017. It cost us just under £2,000. Register office and a reception for 20 people, all food and drink included. My frock was from Dorothy Perkins bridal range and DH got a suit from Next. It doesn't have to cost a fortune.

DH was 51 and I was 49. We'd been together since 1984 and have one adult DS. For us it was all about pensions - only a spouse or civil partner can access a widower/widow's pension in our schemes - and being next of kin if anything happened to either of us. We didn't want our DS being put in a position to make difficult decisions.

I wish we had done it sooner to be honest. Once we decided to do it it was really easy to arrange. We both hate being the centre of attention so we went for the quickest possible ceremony available. I timed it and we were in and out of the register office in just under 20 minutes! It didn't feel rushed though and the reception was fab.

Nicknamegoeshere · 09/10/2020 19:24

My fiancé and I had planned to marry and set a date but had to cancel the venue as I lost my job and we could no longer afford it.

I then very surprisingly fell pregnant on the pill (taking it 100% correctly). We were shocked but it made us reevaluate. At 38 I wasn't getting any younger so we decided to start trying. Fell pregnant first month and now have a baby girl!

We will get married when the Covid-19 situation is better, but no hurry. I am the wealthier of the partnership with greater earning potential and some savings (he has very little in way of savings). These savings will be used to put down a deposit for a house when I'm back working after mat leave.

I guess we need to write wills because we're in rented (not through choice) and it would be a struggle for either of us alone to pay the rent. I know our parents would help but that isn't really the point.

Teddybear27 · 09/10/2020 19:26

It depends on the couple and where they are in their relationship. We don’t have any children but I wanted to get married for the security and also the commitment. Yes, some people will say you don’t need to get married for commitment but we felt it was important to us...

CakeRequired · 09/10/2020 19:27

It's usually for the legal protection side. Sometimes though it's because they are trying to fix a failing relationship and think that marriage will help. Maybe it was financial reasons that stopped it happening before.

Fully agree though that people should be married before kids. I'm insisting on that to my partner so I can string him up for life essentially if he dares leave me to be a single mum with kids. Grin Although I currently out earn him so I'd probably be fine but still he isn't getting out of his duties.

Friendsoftheearth · 09/10/2020 19:28

As time progresses and women become truly independent, I doubt marriage will be as popular as it is now, I doubt children will be much of a priority either.

We see this development in Japan and part of Asia especially. Women simply don't want to get saddled down with a man. Why would they when they can have a better life outside of marriage. Ditto kids.

Some women are deciding it is not for them, that equality theory does not always match the reality. Women usually end up with the lions share of the responsibility, mental load, stress and bodies that are never the same.

problembottom · 09/10/2020 19:30

Well I got pregnant, bought a house with DP and got engaged in that order. Totally back to front! Ideally wanted to be married first but we suddenly felt broody and wanted to try straight away. We had been unsuccessfully househunting before we had DD but our dream home came back on the market soon after she was born. Now we have baby DD the idea of getting married is much more important to us for her sake and DP proposed on my birthday recently. We’ll get there in the end!