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

[Lcats]

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.

We were together 13 years, bought a flat and had a kid before we got married. Honestly it was Brexit that made the decision for us, with all the uncertainty we didn’t want our family spilt up and be unable to live in the same country. That and inheritance tax. We did a very quick registry office trip with a few friends. Nothing to do with a big wedding or show of commitment.

Could be tax and legal benefits. My late grandmother, divorced from her first marriage, only married her partner of three decades a few years before she died.

We have 2 children and aren't married. We probably will eventually to protect each other when we die. But it's tricky, neither of us are bothered about getting married for any other reason (well he would quite like to, I am much less fussed) than death. And to say we are getting married in case one of us dies just seems like a rubbish reason! We didn't do it before now due to various issues, predominantly involving family complications on my side.

My dad and stepmum married after 20 odd years living together (no kids, both had kids from previous marriages). My dad had always said he didn't want to marry again so I am fairly sure they did that as they were both getting older and wanted to protect their finances in the event of one of them dying (which sadly did happen 5 years later).

Getting married was really important to us....we had been together for 8 years and had two young children when we married in 2013, it just was something we wanted to do very early on (fell pregnant).it was a magical amazing day
Legally it felt a sensible thing to do as we bought a house afterwards etc

I’m not one of the people who have done this but I could have been I guess - when I met DH I knew I really wanted children but wasn’t bothered about marriage. We moved in together and started ttc and I honestly wasn’t bothered about getting married at all. It was only from reading Mumsnet (and straying out of the ttc forums) that it occurred to me that not being married could potentially leave me vulnerable. It should have been obvious but I just didn’t really think that way.

As it turns out it took us years to conceive and DH had proposed in the meantime and I was more amenable to the idea as time had gone on. I think there was an element of ‘fuck it the baby is clearly not happening let’s plan a big party’ but very happily it turned out I was 8 weeks pregnant when we got married.

I can see how, if babies had have come sooner and it hadn’t taken so long, that getting married would be one of those things we’d do one day, then other things would take priority and it would be years down the line before we got round to it.

ConquestEmpireHungerPlague Yes, you can of course replicate some of the protections that marriage confers but not all. Our pension schemes, which we joined in the 1980s, do not allow a widow's or widower's pension to be paid the surviving partner without being married or in a civil partnership. For us it was worth paying £2k to get married to have those protections.

No affairs, no need to suddenly commit or re-commit to each other and no complicated financial affairs. We've just happily lived together for over 30 years.

And not everyone has the chance to nominate a NOK when they are taken to hospital. If they are unable to communicate the clinicians will deal with the closest blood relative if you are not a spouse or civil partner. If you have a difficult relationship with family or in-laws this could be horrendous.

Patients Association - Next of Kin

I've being with partner 15 years ( both 32,33)couldn't think of anything worse than getting married, got two young kids.
in what way does it protect you? we have critical life insurance, ovs if he or I died there'd be pensions to consider but they usually find their way to the right person don't they just takes a little longer? Or can you not just make a will stating where you want it to go anyway?
All money is in a joint account and if we split house and savings would be shared?
Am I being really naive? What else if there to protect?

Kids first, married later for me and DH. There are legal and financial implications to being married and we got to a point where that became important. Nothing to do with commitment and love, that was already there. That said, I think big proposals and big fancy weddings are a load of old rubbish so it didn’t matter when we got married as it wasn’t a big deal.

I’m married, 2 kids, six & one years old respectively. I work part time, 21hrs a week in a job that’s local but has no career prospects whatsoever.

I don’t earn much. I have a degree & a teaching qualification but I’ve chosen to put my career on hold to raise the kids. It was not an easy decision to make.

If my DH (who is by far the higher earner) decides to leave me for someone else, without the financial security offered to me through our marriage contract, I’d be absolutely buggered. Women are, in the majority, still doing most of the child-rearing, usually opting to sacrifice their careers in the process.

Women in my situation, with no career to speak of, no decent income, are very, very vulnerable. I still think, even today that marriage generally protects women more than it does men.

Having said that, I married young, & for heartfelt reasons. I married my best friend, & at the time we just wanted to commit emotionally to each other in that traditional way. I think as well, marriage is not just a commitment to each other.......it is also a commitment both of share to make it work. It binds you with that promise, and you cannot easily walk away from it when things get tough.

Op are you from another coutnry? I ask because the word 'de facto' is used in Australia and New Zealand and I think that co-habitees or partners have simialr legal rights in those coutnries as a married couple. That is not the case in the UK.

For me it was a legal thing, rather than a “celebration”, although we did buy 60 of our nearest and dearest some very mediocre chicken for dinner and then get pissed after (well, they did, I got pregnant celebrating our engagement and was 8 months gone by the time we got married )

@winetime89 inheritance tax. If my partner died and we weren’t married, I don’t have the cash in the bank to pay for the inheritance tax on his half of the house so I’d have to sell our family home.

I witnessed my parents get married and I loved it.

So I wanted my children to be around when I got married.

We are going to wait until they are a bit older so they can be included as I think that makes it more special

[quote BrummyMum1]@winetime89 inheritance tax. If my partner died and we weren’t married, I don’t have the cash in the bank to pay for the inheritance tax on his half of the house so I’d have to sell our family home.[/quote]
il have to google it.
I thought if we had life insurance Where one of us dies the house gets payed off that's all there was too it.

We did it.
Together for 7 years when we had dd.
Got married when she was 6.
Still married 9 years later.
However, we spent nearly 6 years living overseas and in that country we were pretty much the only couple we knew who weren't married. It wasn't really an issue, but it did make us reevaluate things.
I think that if we hadn't have moved overseas, we probably wouldn't have got married.

We’ve been together for 30 years. 2 kids. Considering getting married purely for inheritance Tax and pensions. Bloody ridiculous.

I don’t understand marriage. Having kids surely is more commitment. Why do people spend a fortune on it? Completely confuses me.

I earn more than my partner. Always have done so don’t need any “protection”.

Having kids surely is more commitment.

Well, to the kids. But having a child with someone isn't in itself a commitment to that person. Marriage and CP both by their nature are, being contracts.

We've been married 30 years, no kids. I don't consider us any less committed than a couple who've been married that long with children.

@winetime89

If you aren’t married then you can’t use both tax allowances on death.

winetime89 No, pensions absolutely do not just take time to find the right person. If a pension scheme does not specifically and explicitly state that it will pay out to an unmarried partner it will not pay out at all if you are the unmarried partner. A will does not and cannot change this.

Sorry but yes, you are being naive. You really need to check out your financial position.

I worded that badly (late and a long week) but life insurance may cover the mortgage (depends on amount insured for obviously). But inheritance tax rules mean married persons and single (but living together) people are treated differently for tax.

We had to send a copy of our marriage certificate to our pension schemes to nominate each other for survivors’ pensions. No marriage, no payment.

@TheMenopausalPinkHairedWitch

Exactly. Even if married - you need to check you are the names person. Fil didn’t do this and it cost mil quite a bit later on. Even marriage didn’t negate the fact he hadn’t explicitly named her as the beneficiary.

Married after kids as i wanted the same name as my children when they started school and something that mattered to me then as i was with their dad, others wouldn't care which is fine as well
Also dh got made redundant so we could then afford a wedding ( albeit on the small side ) as we had a £1500 we had never had that amount as dh retrained when ds1 was born so money was very tight

@VinylDetective

We had to send a copy of our marriage certificate to our pension schemes to nominate each other for survivors’ pensions. No marriage, no payment.

That's interesting! Neither DP or I had to do that