To see a lot of couples in this situation

[Whatyoutryingtodo]

I see quite a few couples I know irl who've been together several years, engaged, own a house and have children, but no wedding plans made.
They've often been engaged for several years too but don't have any plans to get married, and say stuff like they'll 'get round to it at some point'.

Just curious as to why this happens quite a lot, not judging as I myself am unmarried and childless due to no interested suitors!

I think people will say that the man has everything he needs so why bother marrying her... Sometimes I wonder why people consider marriage more of a commitment than children? At least with marriage you can divorce, even if it's expensive and stressful, children you're tied for life.

People make different choices that suit them?

I don't want to get married for lots of good reasons. That doesn't make me stupid, which seems to be what is being suggested here. My family finances are absolutely fair and sorted.

There’s obvious a lot more to your friends case. A TOLATA claim is expensive to pursue and not straightforward. To establish an equitable interest in someone’s property you need strong evidence. I’m a solicitor.

While marriage may seem outdated to some, I will be advising any daughters I have to avoid having children outside of wedlock if they can help it. The legal protection of marriage almost always benefits women due to the fact that it is still overwhelmingly women that do the bulk of the child rearing, usually at a cost to their own career and pension.

I would give the same advice to any sons, to be fair.

100% this.

This is me. Living together with a toddler and engaged since Christmas 2019. Wedding got cancelled twice because of covid - we wanted to keep moving forward so we bought a house and had a baby. Wedding took a back seat both mentally and financially.

would love to get married one day but I’m almost “over” the idea 😂- just want someone else to organise it for me. That is a key bit of what puts me off.

I would understand wanting to avoid the expense (I think it’s around £1k minimum?) but it doesn’t have to be a faff, it’s a legal transaction in the registry office at the end of the day, you don’t have to have the celebration.

"I would give the same advice to any sons, to be fair."

I think that parents should advise sons NOT to get married unless they wholeheartedly and unreservedly want to with their eyes wide open.

I genuinely think that would do women a massive favour to have far less men getting married, it would make me quite happy to see men being single forever if they do not want to enter into marriage.

Women should be thoroughly educated about the financial consequences to them as women of having children and then (hopefully) move society towards less and less women risking having children with men who turn around and argue they were pushed or coerced into a marriage they didn't want and then all of their assets were stolen off them by the mother of their children.

I have a son by the way and I will be advising him not to get married. I will also be advising my daughter to think very long and hard about the consequences to her as a woman of having children, especially if she ends up single and for the rest of her life is co parenting with a man who accuses her of stealing all his money off him.

Why would that be of any benefit though? If I’m getting married; I’m literally only doing it for the party. I have got the same protections as a married couple anyway. It’s just a faff.

It's easier to conceive a child than it is to organise even a registry office wedding.

@SquirrelRed this is pretty much my exact situation too - the cost of getting married when you have two kids and a house to pay for first seems quite frivolous really. We'd happily do a registry office wedding or even elope but the uproar it would cause with certain family members....not sure it would be worth it 😂

I got married 9 years ago at a registry office. Easy as pie. We've been trying to conceive for a good while, though. So for us it was very much the other way around.

Do you really have the same legal protections? I didn’t realise this. In which case yes it is a total faff and waste of money for nothing!

The people I know who are engaged with no wedding in sight or engaged and plan to get married in 10 years time is due to finances and things like “we want to do x y and z first” go back to uni, career change, travelling etc..
on the other hand I have a friend who booked a big fancy wedding within a week of the proposal and they are absolutely skinting themselves to afford it sooner rather than later - even after a redundancy and being evicted they will not postpone or downsize the wedding.

We got engaged a couple of years after meeting, (20 years ago) planned to marry then life got in the way, had child, moved country, bought house, had another child, moved again, changed jobs several times, always something else we need to spend money on.
We keep saying we need to get it booked as not getting any younger & it will make the future less complicated legally i guess.
Maybe 2024 will be the year.

Whats the bloody rush?

We were engaged for 5 years.

One of the reasons it was so long was we couldn't be arsed with all the family bollocks and pressure to organise a big wedding.

In the end we didn't invite them.

In its most basic form marriage is a contract. I am one of those fiancé's who has a child and a house but not married.

I also (as a woman) earn far more, almost triple than my (male) partner. I love him dearly and we have for the most part the most amazing relationship. If i were to marry him and it fall apart I don't want to lose most of my money to him.

That's it, albeit in its most brutal form, why I haven't married him.

I have no desire to be married. Been there, done that and it’s not for me.

Yes.

We each have power of attorney - which even married couples should have so it wasn’t an extra faff.

We are named beneficiaries on each others pension and death in service payments.

We never had any assets prior to the relationship; we jointly own our house and could both afford the property alone.

We have both earned roughly the same during our relationship - and have taken equal “hits” to our earnings due to childcare (we both had a turn at being part time before we both went back full-time; he took my whole mat leave off unpaid, blah blah blah)

Our property is under the inheritance tax limit and probably will always be so because we live in a low cost of living area.

We also have wills with each other as beneficiaries.

Providing you are smart; it’s really easy to protect yourself. For some people that’s marriage; for some it’s deliberately not marrying; and for others it’s taking some simple steps which completely cuts out any need to be married.

wills and beneficiaries can be changed though when one party no longer wants the other to benefit.
Not relevant for everybody but one thing marriage makes a lot easier is living in different countries. Spouse visa is generally a lot easier to obtain than unmarried partner one.

This is us! Basically our story was we bought a house together and got engaged at that point. Then due to age we started trying for children. This took a long longer than we ever thought and our focus was very much on this. Then of course when you have children money is very much in short supply. So getting married has just been constantly put on the back-burner. It has never been a huge goal or dream of mine although I would like to do it at some point so we are all tied together.

Marriage has become much less of a necessity for people overall due to the increase in gender equality and reduction in social stigma against being unwed parents. So only the people who truly want to get married bother, while others who aren't as fussed just don't bother with it.

SAHPs are overwhelmingly still women though. And those women could be left with just some piddly maintenance, without any rights to, for example, pension.

" rights to, for example, pension"

sorry but FAOD pensions orders by UK family court in favour of a STHP are far far more rare than people think.

I had no incentive to marry and thank god I didn't. As the higher earner my ex would have been entitled to half of everything and part of my pension. I much prefer being independent, would never want to rely on anyone for money.

Right, and if things are going far enough south that we are taking each other off the pension (which would only apply after death anyway) then we would be divorcing anyway, thus it’s irrelevant.

@millymog11 in your example of a married coyple where the wife is not in the deeds. That is dealt very differently to an unmarried couple. As it's dealt with by divorce laws.

Not the usual TOLATA rules. There it is very difficult to prove you own any share (isn't green v midland bank still good law there? )
Unless you both put money in at the start and the man basically tricked you into not being on the deeds (ie said you were too young or salary too low) then generally not on deeds means no share.

Now being threatened with a very expensive court case may make someone decide to play nice and offer you what seems fair to avoid court. Which is why most people probably give their ex partner something rather than fight it in court.