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.

That's me.

Been together ages, already have big commitment, shared home (which we're both entitled to 50% equity), shared kids, own savings, own careers.

No need to marry and also, whilst I love him, I hate weddings and big displays of affection.

Also hate pissing money down the drain. Eg on a wedding or potential divorce.

Quite happy as we are.

Been with my DP 6 years, house, child. Not engaged but no intention to marry.
No interest in getting married despite living as if we are.
Some people just don't want to, some can't afford to. There's lots of reasons

Weddings for most are a massive waste of money, not all obviously but most especially when most marriaged don't last nowadays. The most illogical thing people spend on imo. Absolutely great if you have the spare cash with nothing more pressing to prioritise.

DP and I are engaged and it’s not in our plans to be married asap. We just have other things that have cropped up and taken more priority than paying for a wedding. We’re happy to wait as we know it’ll happen eventually!

… I might also be a little bit of a feminist on this one too, I think.

Why are women so happy to give up their surname? I get angry just thinking about it. It feels like wiping out my own family history, just because I would be getting married. To be ‘owned and labelled’ by someone.

I decided to give my children both surnames, there is no way I carry them for 9 months and give them my partner’s name only. I hope there would be a little of me in there too.

I now plenty of women out there happy to take their husband’s name, but I think I am in the minority who feel resentful.

Not just that, it's the taxpayer who picks up the pieces with benefits etc while the man happily moves on (and often immediately marries) a new woman, finances intact.

@CatMadam So you think having children with someone isn't a partnership? What is it, then?

Interestingly a lot of friends who were so pro wedding are now divorced (late 40s) I could definitely tell at the time 20 years ago which of my friends were in it for the "wedding" or the relationship. Some younger women desperately want marriage and it rarely lasts it seems if that's the motivation.

There are as many reasons for not marrying as Carter has pills. And each reason is valid to the person who 'owns' that reason. The problem is that so many people aren't completely honest about it. I'm currently married (35+ years) and if I were to be single I would never marry again. I'm financially secure and have had and raised my family. BUT I would be completely honest about it to anyone who felt the need to ask.

I do think there are far more women than men who want to get married, although there may be a shift in numbers for women who are older (like me) or women who have already had their children. But of those who don't want to marry there are far more men than women who, frankly, lie about it. Thus those 'long engagements' that never culminate in marriage.

As far as the 'benefits' of marriage, if you want to have children or buy property together then I think marriage is a smart thing to do beforehand for the legal protections it automatically confers. And it's absolutely imperative if you want or plan to be a SAHP (unless you're wealthy in your own right) or if for some reason your spouse wants you to stop working, reduce hours, or 'tailor' your career around theirs, children or no. There are also the benefits of automatically being next of kin regarding medical issues/decisions (although I think the law is different on that in the UK than here in the US). Inheritance issues are different here so marriage doesn't really avoid/change IHT like it does in the UK and an unmarried couple can still have a joint living trust that avoids IHT altogether (at least in my state).

The 'downside' of marriage is the difficulty in ending the relationship (divorce and all its contingent hassles) and the possibility of a lack of protection of pre-marital assets and/or an unfair division of joint assets. And both are very valid reasons for not wanting to marry.

I do think there's a special place in hell for men who string women along with promises of marriage and/or children until it's too late and their biological clocks have run down.

There are plenty of women who are quite happy to be in a committed relationship without marriage. It's not just men.

Well this makes perfect sense. You don't want to marry. So you aren't engaged. Because an engagement is a 'plan to marry'. Fine.
OP is talking about people who are engaged, BUT have no plans to marry. Making the 'engagement' meaningless. What is it? Just some sweet words and a piece of jewellery.
having kids, sharing a property, marriage these are all concrete ties. I could be 'engaged' to a random tomorrow by telling him we should marry and him saying yes. We then go our separate ways never to meet again but I can still claim I'm 'engaged'..

Of course, people can do what they like but I do wonder what people think being engaged means. If you're not going to prioritise a wedding then why get engaged?

Sadly I see a lot of women getting a 'shut up' ring. I always say if a man wanted to do something he'd do it.

@Silverfoxlady
If you take all of the above reasons away, is there something I am missing?

-have you both made wills? If one or other of you dies intestate, if you aren't married you may very well have a big problem. if your partner dies without writing a Will, you will not be entitled to any portion of their estate. don't think you can sort it out tomorrow. anything can happen and then its too late. you need a will now not next week.

-inheritance tax is a HUGE saving if you are married and depending on the size of the estate/value in the house in the long run because of that it will benefit your children because otherwise the estate will be double taxed once on the death of the first of the unmarried couple to die, and again on the second one.

Any gift to a spouse /civil partner is exempt from inheritance tax so for example when a person leaves their entire estate to their spouse/civil partner no inheritance tax is payable. If you are unmarried or not in a civil partnership and leave your estate to your partner, they will receive their share less any inheritance tax payable. The nil rate band is £325k so if the estate is greater value it will be very very expensive.

-do you own your own home jointly or is it in his name alone? again if not married = problems if in his name alone and no will.

-medical emergencies -if your partner has a stroke or suffers some accident where they are unconscious and you do not have a lasting power of attorney in place, you may find that the hospital refuse to let you see them and you will not be able to have any say in their care or life decisions.

I’m in the exact position. Engaged 8 years, 2 children and a mortgage. There’s always better things to spend money on. The house, DC, things for the family. I’d quite happily fuck off down the registry office with 2 random witnesses from the street but DP feels too guilty and thinks family should be there. Every time we talk about it, it starts with just parents attending but then slowly devolves into aunties, well if auntie Deirdre is invited then cousin George has to be too, and the “small” gathering turns into anything but. I have autism and being the centre of attention and everyone staring at me, and expecting me to perform the role of Bride makes me want to hide under the duvet and never surface.

Not being married doesn’t financially implicate me in any way though, we both work FT and earn similar salaries. I would never consider being SAHM whilst unmarried.

Theres so many important things to do/sort out that fall by the wayside when you have small kids. I'm very grateful I managed it pre-kids. I doubt we'd have sorted it by now otherwise, however important it is to us. I can totally see how it falls off the agenda.

No prospect of marriage, no partnership as far as I'm concerned but there again I love my DH enough & it's reciprocated so this formal commitment makes us both feel even more committed to our family life. I have a friend who has never married & her DD age 11 keeps asking why her mum has a different name to her & her dad (she has his surname) She also says when you get married can I be a bridesmaid 😭

The problem is (and believe me, I’m not one for marriage as the absolute thing to do), there’s what you both agree you’re entitled to and then there’s what the law says you’re entitled to. When you’re not married, what you’re entitled to can get murky (even in divorce, it’s murky but more clearly defined).

There are as many reasons for not marrying as Carter has pills. And each reason is valid to the person who 'owns' that reason. The problem is that so many people aren't completely honest about it

That's a great way of putting it.

My partner and I were engaged 15 years ago. We decided in the end that marriage wasn’t for us - we are not romantic and feel the need, we are definitely not religious at all, we are not sociable in the slightest, and now after 4 children (almost 5) it feels like ‘what is the point?’.
^^
I even sat down the other day and googled the ‘benefits of getting married’… what are they?
^^
It mentioned that it helps with inheritance tax and pensions if he dies. Morbid thought really, but he has that covered with his work pension forms he filled. A will can also cover this problem.
^^
If you take all of the above reasons away, is there something I am missing?

Do you own the your home @Silverfoxlady? If it’s owned jointly then fair enough, although if you were married and spilt you could ask for the house not to be sold until the youngest child is 18 (so the primary carer can stay in residence so less upheaval for DC ) instead of being forced to sell and the primary carer could get a larger proportion of proceeds of house sale.

Also being unmarried, if your partner decided he didn’t want his pension to go to you, or left you late on, you wouldn’t be entitled to any of it which if you’ve been a SAHM raising the DC and doing all the wife work to facilitate him being absent working to further his career, you would have a much smaller government pension in retirement to scrape by on and he’d be living it up on his generous company pension or who ever he left it to would.

Is he nominated NOK to make medical decisions on your behalf if you get ill?

Those are a few ‘benefits’ of getting married.

I’m a total atheist, not soppy at all but I insisted DH and I get married after I found out I was pregnant as I just wanted us to be together in a legally recognised unit. Our commitment to stay together to raise our child together was far bigger than a wedding or a piece of paper so legal protection was a no brainer!

We got married when DD1 was 4 months old. Registry office, horse and cart to a church blessing for our marriage and for DD instead of a christening (for my mum!), horse and cart to restaurant posh lunch for relatives and friends (about 40 people), speeches, cake. No evening do as costs increased significantly so parents had DD for the night so we could go to a posh hotel, have a candlelit dinner, have a few drinks and wild, uninterrupted sex, a lie in and a leisurely breakfast which was worth more to us than a disco! Total cost was less than £3k including night in hotel. That was 30 years ago though.

From my experience of unmarried couples with DC or that have been together for many years that I’ve known, the woman definitely does want to be married but the man stalls, delays and makes excuses then gaslights the woman into agreeing it was a joint decision not to get married or the women does not want to admit to herself or others than the man doesn’t want to commit to her.

Just to add, when people split up, those ‘what if’ agreements you came to during the relationship quite often go out the window when the rage and heartache come in.

I’ve been with DP 14 years. We got engaged just before COVID. No firm plans to marry at the moment but it’s something we both want to do. And we will. We’ve recently moved house and in the middle of renovations, plus we have two autistic DC that will struggle with a wedding. DS in particular (aged 14 yrs) thinks that if we get married we’ll move to another country and leave him! No idea where he’s got this idea from as I’ve only spent one night away from him his entire life - and that was when he was a baby and my dad was in hospital dying!

Getting engaged doesn’t feel pointless to me. The fact that DP loves me enough to have asked means a lot. Even without an actual wedding, it’s a symbol that we’re both committed to each other. He’s not one for empty words or meaningless gestures either, so it’s very special to me.

I honestly couldn’t give a toss if other people think it’s stupid to be engaged without setting a firm date - they’re entitled to their opinion. We will only have a tiny wedding - just us and the DC as they won’t manage anything else - but I would like a nice dress! 😂 I’d like to lose a bit of chub ideally before we marry so when all this house stuff is over we might see where we’re at. Who knows?! We will do it when the time is right for us.

Definitely. If you're not making the decision because of religious or ideological convictions or whatever, as some do, it should be about whether you prefer the legal position for married or unmarried couples at the end of the relationship. Whether that's splitting up or death.

Haven't RTFT but I'm in this situation. It's purely down to finances.

Perhaps it's stupid and romantic of me but I don't want to just get legally married, even if it's a registry office job I want to have semblance of a ceremony and with 3 young kids on one wage it's just not a financial priority.

My partner and I both want to get married when our lives are a bit less chaotic and I have lost a few pounds and feel more confident in a wedding dress ha.

I think a fair few people of my generation are in this complacent state. Marriage is definitely not a mandatory prerequisite to settling down and starting a family anymore.

Whose wage is supporting your family? Yours, I hope, for your sake.

Otherwise you are SAHM to three offspring and have zero security should your children's father decide tomorrow that he wants to walk away. After three kids, why do you need the fanfare of a "wedding" ? It's not as though it's a big life stage transition at that point.

We chose a new surname when we got married. It wasn’t an anagram or mix of our original ones, we just chose one we both loved.

I think often the woman gets bored waiting and young men don’t feel any responsibility to get married these days as they can have the perks of marriage without actually doing the wedding or marriage contract bit. Personally if I ever have a daughter I’d 100% encourage her to get married before kids because so so many women are vulnerable with children and the lack of security marriage brings. It’s what protects most women legally in the event of divorce etc and whilst some might think this is outdated the truth is that women carry most of the joke workload and lose out when they have a family on pensions and earnings; at least marriage offers some stake and recognises the woman’s vulnerability to an extent. I think some women now also buy into the idea that marriage is outdated but truthfully I think this is ignorant of the real cost of children to women.

HarlequinsPants and SpringViolet,

Thank you both for the honest feedback - so much better than the Google search I did!

Wow, that has made me think…

We don’t own a house, but I might one day inherit one from my father. Which poses the question about my partner and children inheriting it one day if something happens to me.

…. Also, it makes me think about who will pull the plug if something serious happens? Or if something happens to him? Would I be allowed to see him in hospital. I was thinking about that with my latest higher-risk pregnancy.

I guess a £300 registry office marriage might help after all… I feel a discussion with DP coming on 🤔