Pros and cons of being married?

[Wowwhatalife]

I don’t mean in a romantic, emotional sense..just practical, money wise? What is there to be gained from being married? Especially if you have a child?
Are there and cons?

I'm not married and have children with my male partner. I don't see any reason to get married as for me the only difference would be the inheritance tax thing and widows pension entitlenent. We are both equal earners, I am financially independent and we've always done everything 50/50, contribution to deposits etc. I'm confident we'd sort everything out ourselves in the event if a split as it's clearly about the kids (teens) and out finances/earnings are pretty equal and I have savings

I would never get married but I am considering a civil partnership at some point for the inheritance tax benefit. I can't see any other benefit for me

I agree that it's a v different position for SAHPs though, who should probably always do a civil partnership or marriage before stopping work or having kids.

There are practical benefits to marriage/civil partnership as opposed to just living together mostly pension, inheritance tax, being able to give send off in event of death you want to give partner.

If your total assets are more than 325 thousand you don’t have to pay inheritance tax upon your spouses death if you are married. Could for someone couples mean the difference between selling the family home and being able to stay there

Marriage legalises your relationship in the sense that it makes the relationship a fact rather than an assumption. It creates a timeline for the relationship so it puts a clear start point and a clear end point (death or divorce).

Marriage is internationally recognised. There was a poster a while back who said that when her DH sadly died while they were abroad the fact they were married made the admin much easier. Apparently if they hadnt been married her DH's next of kin would have had to make all arrangements (this could be siblings or parents). This type of situation can occur whether living abroad or simply on holiday.

[quote Wowwhatalife]@Aroundtheworldin80moves Can you tell me more about your child being considered British if married?
We live abroad, both British, Ds born where we are, what difference will it make to him if we marry?[/quote]
In recent years many things have changed eg a child with two British parents living abroad would be British if registered as such but only because the father was British.

Spike Milligan had married parents but was born in India, as his mother could not pass on her citizenship he inherited his father's nationality.

Had they not been married he would probably be Indian.

I remember a story n our local paper from the 1970s where only a British father could pass on his nationality.

A child was born on a plane while the parents were flying back to the UK from Australia.

The parents were not married, mother was British, father was Irish. At the time an Irish father could only pass on his nationality to a legitimate child.

The plane was in Indonesian airspace and I think the it was a Qantas flight.

So the parent looked into Indonesian and Australian citizenship, for Indonesia the child would have to learn the language and culture and I can't remember why the child couldn't get Australian citizenship.

Eventually changes to laws allowed the child to be British by inheriting her mother's nationality.

The country you live in can also have an impact on a child's nationality.

In the 1990s a number of Hong Kong residents became German citizens. Eastern Germany would allow anyone to apply for a passport of The German Democratic Republic.

As unification was on the cards this meant that you would become an EU citizen.

The reason for wanting EU citizenship was because British rule was ending and Britain had tightened up who in Hong Kong was British.

Sorry slightly off topic, but something I'm interested in.

@EmpressCixi

Civil partnerships are now also legal for opposite sex couples. So you van have legal rights and benefits of marriage without the religion/romance.

What's the difference?

It depends if you want to share everything with the your partner or not. Very simplistically

Civil partnership just avoids the label marriage nowadays I think

No advantages for women with their own careers, makes them financially vulnerable and also married women are generally less happy.

Civil Partnership is almost identical to marriage in the UK (there are a few minor differences, most notably that adultery isn't grounds for dissolution (but almost no one divorces for adultery on paper anyway)) but may not be treated the same overseas, so if you want to travel (especially to countries where sex outside marriage is a criminal offence) you should double check the rules.

The positive of marriage is that it unites your finances. That is also the negative.

The poster who said it's a financial zero sum game between the couple is right to some extent, but there are also Inheritance tax, married couple's tax allowance and bereavement allowance advantages.

@WaterBottle123

No advantages for women with their own careers, makes them financially vulnerable and also married women are generally less happy.

Agree. But if you want children marriage is good protection. A lot of couples split up when the woman is pregnant or has a newborn, which means she is on low maternity pay.

In addition, the study regarding happiness in women found the following order for happiness
Single women no children
Married women no children
Married women with children
Single women with children

So it’s clear if you are childfree, likely to be happier single. But if you have children, likely to be happier if married.

It's also very dependent on priorities and individual circumstances. So eg a woman who has her own career and is the higher earner might still decide marriage or CP is in her best interests if her partner is several years older, to avoid a situation where IHT has to be paid after the death of the first partner rather than the second. If the family home is only worth 90k, probably not a concern. It really varies.

Marriage generally comes into its own when the shit hits the fan.

My DH was widowed young when his first wife died.

Being married made him entitled to Widowed Parents Allowance (it’s changed now, but is still worth £3500 in a lump sum, then £350 a month for 18 months) which really helped when he was taking time off work/changing hours/needing extra childcare etc.

It made a difference with inheritance tax. Also for them her solicitor made a cock up with her will and luckily things reverted to DH anyway or that could have been a proper nightmare.

It’s seemingly small things that can make the big difference

@EmpressCixi

So it’s clear if you are childfree, likely to be happier single. But if you have children, likely to be happier if married.

Interesting... but can't help feeling that doesn't tell the whole story.

I understand why "single women with children" would be near the bottom of the list but does that control for financial status? Presumably the main reason why "single women with children" is at the bottom is that generally they are women who have been cohabiting with someone who has walked off without giving them any money? (which may account for the majority in that category).

I'm technically single (in that I'm not married) with a child but am financially self-sustaining and I definitely think I've got the best of all possible worlds.

I'd hazard a guess that a lot of women who have done well out of divorce would not consider themselves to be that unhappy either.

The marital status of a woman is only relevant where it affects her financial wellbeing/security.

In and of itself I doubt being or unmarried has much bearing on happiness.

@thepeopleversuswork
From what I remember, the study was not very robust to begin with even though the news reported it widely. I do remember it had limitations on controls as you rightly suspected. You raise all very good points. I will go and find it and link it, so we can revisit it.

@thepeopleversuswork
Interesting. It appears the “study” I remember seeing in the news was really a book by someone called Dolan. And he got his facts wrong!
I found this article saying that he had misinterpreted happiness in marriage in the data. The surveyors recorded married women saying they were happy with “spouse present” and then married women saying they were “fucking miserable” when the survey listed “spouse absent”. Dolan apparently thought this meant the married women lied and said they were happy when their spouse was in the room, and then told the truth when their spouse was out the room. Unfortunately, spouse present means they are living together, and spouse absent means the spouse is away- long distance, military tour/deployment, sick in hospital etc.
www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/4/18650969/married-women-miserable-fake-paul-dolan-happiness

So I don’t know anymore whether marriage makes women unhappy at all! I think I will need to go to the actual data...which they say is some American Survey of Time Use.

@EmpressCixi

That's quite funny.

I've definitely seen other data which suggests that overall married men are happier than single men but single women are happier than married women. Again, I don't think that controlled for finances, which is the most important variable in my view. But its not hard to make a reasonable hypothesis as to why that might be so....

I've found something from the highly reputable Men's Health but sure we can do better than that.
www.menshealth.com/health/a19516451/why-married-men-are-happier/

I do think its ironic though that while women tend to be much more fixated than men are on getting married, there's an increasing body of evidence that marriage generally makes men much happier than women.

Finances really.

To be honest my husband would have been better off not marrying me, he doesn’t have children and he owned two mortgage free properties. Where as I have a huge mortgage and I’m a parent.

My DH and I got married mainly because we don't want kids and felt that society might take us less seriously because of that. So we got married to cement ourselves, formally, as a 'proper couple'.
We don't think like this, but I know others do.

If you’re foreign (like me) makes a lot of admin etc easier in terms of rights across both countries.
No point if no children and both sides have own assets.

Also to add next of kin , access fo partners stuff upon death etc etc.
Wills can be changed so not really a firm commitment.

@Minceandonions

My DH and I got married mainly because we don't want kids and felt that society might take us less seriously because of that. So we got married to cement ourselves, formally, as a 'proper couple'. We don't think like this, but I know others do.

genuinely curious... why do you care what other people think of your relationship?

I'm not having a go... but at some level I can't help thinking that this is one of the worst reasons to get married and if people steered clear of this approach they would be more likely to get married for the right reasons.

If it works for you fair enough, but I wouldn't want my daughter to get married just to keep up appearances. It's such a huge decision with such massive ramifications.

• For IHT it's not just the actual tax amount but also you get automatic access to all their finances as opposed to having to wait for the paperwork to clear
• there can be tax breaks if one of you earns significantly more than the other
• would also give you access to certain benefits at the point of death
• For women having children whether you have an amazing career or not a woman's earning potential drops by around 40% by having children so marriage provides protection for her as otherwise the partner can walk away without having to provide financial support other than basic child maintaince (and even then that can be difficult).

Medically speaking

• you have the automatic right to make medical decisions if the other one is incapacitated.
• husband is automatically recognised as a child's father at birth - if not married and something happens to the mother he cannot make medical decisions for the child and will have to go to court to be put on the birth cert and gain legal rights (a very rare thing but could happen) or the mother can cause difficulties in having the name added to the cert if the relationship breaks up

@thepeopleversuswork
Yes, think we can do better, interesting though the Men’s Health article did not compare men vs women. It says
“The study looked at 1,366 people who weren't married before participating in the survey, got married at some point during, and stayed married. Researchers compared the subjects to a control group who was demographically alike in every way other than being married.

The results: “People, on average, aren't happier following marriage than they were before marriage, but they are happier than they would have been if they stayed single,” says Stevie C. Y. Yap, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology at MSU and one of the study authors.”

Of course, it’s only a small sample and they’re all American. Can’t assume marriage affects everyone the same everywhere in world! I will have a browse.

@thepeopleversuswork
Found an interesting series from 2020. Apparently there is a gender gap where women are usually happier than men. Opening paragraph

“The research—based on the work of scholars around the world—finds consistent patterns in the determinants of life satisfaction across millions of respondents. These include income (yes it matters but not as much as you might think), health (matters a lot), employment, families and friendships, and age (there is a mid-life dip in well-being that holds across most people and countries around the world). A question that always comes up, though, is “are women happier than men?” The answer is “yes, but it’s complicated”—and at times in surprising ways.”

And a paragraph on marriage specifically that was interesting, though a bit obvious that if you’re a woman coerced into marriage by societal expectations, you’re not likely to be happy.

“We also found that the typically positive links between life satisfaction and marriage were much weaker in the same countries with compromised gender rights, where marriage is often an imposed norm rather than a choice. Indeed, it was the married men who were happier than the unmarried in these countries, not the married women. More generally, the common finding that married people are happier than non-married people is in part due to selection bias: happier people are more likely to get married. By construction most cross-section studies—which are at one point in time—are simply comparing the higher happiness levels of those individuals who married each other versus those who did not marry.”
www.brookings.edu/essay/are-women-happier-than-men-do-gender-rights-make-a-difference/