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.

I've been engaged to my partner since February 2020. Tbh I thought we would absolutely be married by now. We've made very little progress with any planning.

We have 3 kids under 5. We're exhausted. We're on a tight budget. But if I'm being honest, it comes down to the fact I'm quite overweight and don't want to be fat on my wedding day. We plan to have a proper health kick after Christmas.

As a single parent who is getting divorced, the hassle of the divorce is shit! It's much easier and cleaner to split from someone when you don't have that legal tie.

The only time I would consider remarrying would be if (and not in priority order here):

1. he brought some assets to the table/signed a pre nuptial agreement
2. there was the possibility of having a child
3. he treated my DD like his own

Otherwise it's not worth it. Marriage is hassle. Can totally see why people stay engaged forever.

DH & I could easily have been in this position, we’re in our twenties with a few friends in this situation. In our experience it’s got nothing to do with a man having everything so “why marry” or people seeing marriage as the bigger commitment, it’s literally just a priority & money thing.

DH & I always knew we wanted to be married before we had kids so that was our priority and we put off ttc until after the wedding because we just knew that once we had children there would always either be not enough money, or there would be the money but we’d spend it on them or family trips etc. We have friends who either had planned pregnancies or who prioritised starting a family, and once they were paying nursery fees/supporting a child money became tighter and if they had an extra £500 a month they would rather put it towards a family holiday or trip out than a wedding day. Yes you could go have a cheap no frills wedding but if you don’t want that then it is a huge expense and I can easily see now I’m pregnant with our first baby where I’d rather spend 15k on family experiences than a wedding especially while we have a young family

If you marry and then have children then you are protected. If you have children without marriage then you know you have no protection. There is no need to change the law. If you want a family then get married first.

We are married now but we had 4 children and an engagement that lasted about 8 years before we actually got married. It wasn’t that we felt marriage was less than a commitment than kids, we just fell pregnant with our first unexpectedly. Then we got engaged but never really got round to getting married for ages. Eventually we just eloped one day and came back married. Looking back, I think I was really put off by the idea of an actual wedding as ours was a very very small affair (literally just me and DH).

YANBU

I never actually want to get married but if I did then I’d want to book the wedding for a year or 2, within a couple months of getting engaged.

You get engaged to be married, that’s the whole point of it.

Too many men propose because it gives the illusion that they want to get married but don’t actually have to commit.
Then years down the line they’re still not married.

There have been multiple threads from women who got engaged and it’s been years but their DP still won’t set a date for the wedding.

I do know of cases where they've just not got round to it, something else always gets in the way. It is of course possible to have a quiet registry office ceremony, but people often don't want that. Then yes, sometimes there's a more deliberate and unpleasant explanation.

@MsRosley trie about iht

But we both have nephews /nieces we would want to leave assets to rather than each other. So iht considerations are less.

But the option to marry at 60 or so still is available. Pension funds can be left out outside of iht etc

I was in this situation with my EXDP and father of my DC. We didn't get married because he kept stalling; there was always another excuse.

After 7 years together, 5 of those engaged, and having had 2 DC, I reached the limit of my patience, pushed him into selling our house together, and left him.

Luckily for me, I was financially independent earning more than twice what he did at the time, and was able to buy my own house with my share of equity plus savings and settle the DC into a new life.

I think a lot more women than would care to admit are in a similar situation to the one I was in, but can't leave due to finances.

With hindsight I would liked to have stuck to my original plan of waiting to meet someone who wanted to get married before having DC, however felt time wasn't in my side, having met in our mid-thirties.

I would always encourage a woman who wants marriage and DC in that order, to do it in that order. Once DC come along, it rarely happens.

I think men see marriage as a commitment and women see children as a commitment.

Otherwise it's not worth it. Marriage is hassle. Can totally see why people stay engaged forever.

The whole point of getting engaged is to get married though.

So IMO you either get engaged and get married soon after (or book it soon after getting engaged).

Or you agree to not get engaged and married.

Just being engaged doesn’t mean anything.

I find it strange too. To me, engaged means engaged to be married - actively planning to get married. I think nowadays a lot of people just use it as a sign of commitment without necessarily wanting it to actually mean engaged. Or they want an expensive wedding relative to their income and it’s also not a financial priority.

It would make more sense for the law to change. Many people don’t want to get married for various reasons, and some people do but their partner doesn’t, or won’t.

I think you’re mad not to marry. People do a complete 180 when they split. All that talk of ‘If we split, I won’t take your house’ is just that: Talk. When people split, emotions, mostly fear and anger, come into play majorly and splitting up is almost always a bitter process. Splitting up becomes entirely about your future economics.

Marry! I understand why people don’t. But if there are kids on the scene, get married. It keeps things fair and equitable in a split, within reason. It’s too risky not to marry. And you can never ever ever ever rest on your laurels in a relationship. People leave, abruptly and out of the blue, and you can be left standing there sideswiped and broken hearted without financial security (especially if you’ve been working hard as the SAHP, but financially dependent on your partner).

Like a good scout, be prepared.

I've been engaged for 5 years almost to the day 😂
Honestly? It's just not a priority for us. And never was. For us it was a way of saying "we want to marry" but "just not right now!". We have children, we have a house together and I had the most assets entering the relationship (though it's evened out a bit now) so there would be no financial benefit for me - it could actually be a total catastrophe if we did get "divorced".

I have two friends who've got married and it's nice for them, but they've sacrificed SO much time and money to do it which you don't get back. We'd rather spend the money on the house. And the time planning it (one of them took 2 years to get a date to get married which then delayed TTC by 2 years which then was sad because it took them a long time to conceive and the whole time they thought "if we'd started two years earlier, we might have a child or two by now.")

Every one of my friends with kids currently are unmarried though. Engaged, but no date or anything. In all cases, they're financially equal if not the higher earner/wealthier by inheritance, but this might be an unusual circle I move in 😂

Getting married is a legal contract inviting the government into your relationship. Plenty of people quite rightly decide they don't fancy this much.

We did the opposite and didn't really get engaged. We just decided to get married, arranged it and did it 3 weeks later.

Wtf, no, we shouldn’t change the law to force someone into a quasi marriage they haven’t agreed to. If you want the legal protections of marriage, get married, it’s not hard!

I personally only consider people engaged if the wedding is actually booked. Unfortunately I know a lot of people (women) who’ve been given “shut up” rings and the man has no intention of actually following through with marrying them, but they’ve made themselves financially vulnerable because they perceive they have security when they don’t.

Getting married doesn’t have to be expensive and to be honest I find it odd when people value having a massive princess party for the day over legally becoming a family unit with all the protections that affords.

Mumsnet will tell you it’s 50/50 women vs men not wanting to get married, but in my experience it is almost always the man that doesn’t want to.

The only thing I’m curious about is why some are concerned with other people’s decisions.

I’m really happy with my marital status and not really interested in anyone else’s.

These threads always descend into women on either side of the fence questioning and criticising each other’s choices.

The unmarried SAHM is a fool who will likely be shafted by the father of her kids, left penniless and homeless.

The married woman is a fool who has succumbed to the patriarchy and signed up to a lifetime of oppression and drudgery.

It’s all a bit depressing.

People with uneven assets worrying about a split, valid reason but it’s often a SAHM in a precarious financial situation.

Men getting engaged with zero intention of marrying because the woman is a really a will do for now but she really wants to marry so they get engaged to shut her up. @tescocreditcard yes your comment makes sense and ties in with what I have written but more to the point.

People wanting a very big fancy wedding so they put it off till they can have the fancy wedding they want to.

Just to add, we had children before we married.
I’m very glad I married because ours was a high asset union that broke down in a phenomenally shocking way- bolt out of the blue. I wouldn’t be as financially secure if we hadn’t married.
Also if you divorce, NEVER EVER file for your decree absolute before a financial settlement is set out in a court order. I got my decree nisi over a year ago. It took a year to get our pension report (NHS… takes ages, huge pension, worth the marriage to get this in a divorce). Now I’m settling and once the financial order is set in stone, I can then get the decree absolute.

I digress. 😆 But these are the things you need to know.

I find it puzzling too, OP. It was always fairly obvious to me that we’d have more money for a wedding/ to save for a deposit before having children, so it made sense to do that first. We had a fairly small wedding (registry office & meal afterwards) - about £2k in total maybe?).

Family/ social expectations also played a part. I was brought up as a Catholic, so the norm was that you got married before children, even if the children came along less than nine months after the wedding! This was in the 80s/ 90s in a northern town - it may have changed now. This certainly influenced my decision to be married first - it was just what you did. I didn’t really think about the legal benefits of marriage until reading about it here on MN.

I also wonder whether social class plays a part (an inflammatory topic on MN, I know!). In my experience over the past couple of decades, the people I know who are from from middle-class backgrounds are far more likely to have got married before having children. Almost all the friends I made at university (from
a mix of backgrounds) got married before having children, as well. Completely anecdotal evidence, of course, but it makes me wonder (I’m from working-class background myself).

You've described me and DP! Absolutely nothing to do with not wanting to commit, having DC is of course a much bigger commitment. In our case we got engaged, realised we weren't getting any younger (met later in life) and thought we best start TTC and see which comes first, wedding or kids. It was kids, two DCs later we really don't have much time or spare cash so the wedding hasn't happened yet but we're very happy.

We're holding off in case we're some day in a position to have a proper wedding but otherwise we'll probably just get it done just the two of us.

I do see that it bothers people a lot especially of the older generation.

Financially all the paperwork is done with the solicitors so we're pretty much married and making sure the other half and children will be taken care of if anything happens.

My best friend and her fiance have been engaged for over 20 years....2 grown up sons......but no intention of getting married!
My FIL and his partner have been engaged for 17 years....no wedding there either!

I'm just not bothered about having a wedding and if I get married then the wedding needs to be good and the best weddings I have been to are the ones when the bride and groom have been very generous (good food/free bar). The budget weddings have been crap. I can't afford to put on an amazing wedding plis have better things to spend my money on.

DP and I own our house jointly, we have life insurance, beneficiary for each other's pensions, wills leaving everything to each other. We both work so being married isn't really necessary for us and if DPs family want to be 'next of kin' for medical/funeral then they can.