To not understand why people get married?

[Mummyto4WM]

Waste of money and merely a show to the world

That's me being flippant but I genuinely don't get it. My partner is desperate to get married. He's already divorced, a divorce following his ex-wife running off with another man. What are the benefits of marriage, when so many end in costly divorce?

If you earn same and same pension it’s unusual. In lots of couples the woman has had a gap to child rear and then worked pt decimating her pension. Married couple divorce she has a right to his pension splitting. Unmarried split no right to pension. Pensions can be extremely valuable worth more than house. No issue for you if yours is enough to support you in old age.

Apart from all the love stuff, marriage is a legally binding contract that offers security that co habiting can't as well as tax incentives, automatically next of kin etc etc. It solidifies a romantic arrangement into a legal/business type arrangement recognised in law.

Personally I don't understand why anyone would have children with someone without being married, but each to her own.

My long divorced parents who are back together are remarrying for inheritance reasons.

I married DH because I wanted to, no showy wedding though- we eloped.
Financially he gains but I wanted to be married before we had a child.

It’s not right or necessary for everyone though.

Call me old fashioned buy plain love often is the cause. Mine had a sprinkling of religion too 😁😁

Ha, we had a really small wedding with me 8 months pregnant so nothing to show off. Our first DS was 3 y old. I have never wanted to marry but I wanted to have the same surname as my children so there you go for a reason...

We have each other as our Lasting powers of attorney...

• Children - even if woman is higher earner pre-pregnancy, and intends to return straight to work, has generous Mat leave package, pregnancy and giving birth can have serious long and short term health impact if unlucky.
• Inheritance tax
• next of kin without expensive POAs

Do you travel abroad? LPOA may not be of use internationally.

In our case, we married when we had two DCs, and one more planned, and I was a full time mum with zero income, career on hold while his was flying.

In addition to the inheritance tax/next-of-kin/legal protection reasons mentioned above.....at the time DH was working for quite a conservative company, and if he were to die the pension benefits were only payable to a spouse, not an unmarried partner. It all added up to a pointless risk to put myself and the DCs in, just for the sake of a marriage certificate. The pendulum swung from "why bother to get married?" to "why would we NOT get married?"

That was 22 years ago, still together, still alive....and I sincerely hope the pension scheme have joined the 21st century for anyone who came after us.

Absolutely... I will very likely marry him. I'm not a mean person who could end that dream for him.
The likely compromise will be a 10k wedding over the wild castle wedding. It's a lot of money for one day. We can make special memories costing a shed load less

Next of kin
Inheritance
Financial security should we seperate.

Anyone getting married because they think it will prevent cheating is a fool. But I'm not sure anyone does do it because of that do they?

Legal protection obviously

"waste of money" only for people like you. Some of us like a party, weddings is the perfect excuse to throw pretty much the party of a lifetime if you want one. I love weddings, nearly all the ones I was invited to were genuine. Big weddings are not mandatory however.

Pretty much everything is "waste of money" if you think about it. Life is too short.

Wedding, honeymoon, parties for christening, big birthdays. Love them and such a better way to catch-up with everyone without waiting for funerals.

You are confusing a marriage with a wedding.

One is intended to last a lifetime, the other is intended to last a day.

Legally, they are very different things.

You'd think a family lawyer would know that.

I agree.

I wouldn't say that marriage is universally beneficial, nor would I say it's always bad.

But it's definitely not just for show - and people thinking that may sign themselves up to legal consequences they are not aware of.

You can have a lovely wedding for a lot less too. I have been invited to a few low-key ones, which probably took a lot of work but didn't cost anywhere that much, not small weddings either

Because we had two children, I can’t work
full time anymore as nursery costs more
than my salary, so I take the hit to care for our children. Being married means I’m protected and if the worst does happen then me and the kids aren’t out on our arse with no money and nowhere to go.

You don’t have to get married if you don’t want to OP. As to why other people get married I feel like you suspect we’re all just brain dead zombies doing it because it’s just the thing to do or because we want a big fancy wedding. Maybe that is true for some but for me and for a lot of people we actually believe in marriage as a serious commitment. It means something real to make that commitment to each other and to stick to it.

Also, we had a huge weekend wedding on a beach resort with a bbq and pools. It was a blood ace day and I’d do it all again. When else do I get to where a completely elaborate dress and have a big party just for putting a ring on it 😂 can’t beat a good old party.

If you work in child protection, you surely must've noticed that marriage has bugger all to do with whether it goes wrong in that way!

But otherwise, agree with the general tone of the thread. The undeniable benefits of marriage occur when you want the legal and financial implications of it, that can't be got any way other than being married or having a CP. Some people want them, some don't. The rest is opinion and preference. If you feel you don't understand IHT and if it's relevant to you, get professional advice.

In terms of relationships ending, it's not usually the divorce itself that's the expensive part. It's the arrangements over children and/or property that go along with it. If you don't want DC together then this may not be applicable to you OP, but anyone who has children and/or property with a partner and believes it's insulating them against expenses in the event of a split is sadly mistaken.

I refuse to have children with my husband before we got married. There is no other legal protection that is the same as marriage especially if you are going to be earing less and looking after children.

I'd probably feel differently if I'd been earing the same as DH finicaly wise. But if you split up and have children you are only ever entitled to child maintenance nothing else unless you are married.

It doesn't have to cost a lot either. Yes my Dad paid for a nice wedding, but I would have quite happily ran off with DH and just had a small registry's wedding. A marriage isn't about the wedding its about everyday that comes after it.

We got married because we wanted to formalise our commitment to each and benefit from its legal protections.

Our wedding wasn't very costly at all - we had a good party. Best party ever in fact. But it wasn't showy and it wasn't costly.

Because many women want to get engaged. They want the proposal.

Because many people (usually women - and I am a woman!) want the fairy tale day, with the big white dress, the flowers, and the instagram pictures.

Because many people (again, often women), think that if they get married, their relationship will be stronger, and their sense of insecurity will go.

Because some women want children and want the protection of giving up (or reducing) work to look after said children.

I never believed in marriage - why would you when half of them end up in divorce and who knows how many who don't are actually happy? I got married because my then DP wanted to. We did. We divorced ten years later (20 years together in all).

Flame me all you want but if the above weren't true (at least in large part) most weddings (not all, but most) wouldn't cost as much as they do, most engagement rings wouldn't end up in pictures on social media, and getting married wouldn't be higher on the wish list for women than it is for men.

Of course there are people who get married for other reasons.

@WallaceinAnderland
You'd think a family lawyer would know that - good job I didn't proclaim to be a family lawyer then! 🤔