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?

My two sisters had children before they got married. One of my sisters stated the reason she was getting married was that if her DH died she would get a widows pension and other benefits. Not married, get nothing..

I might add that where we live you get a widows pension and can still work without it being effected.

I don’t get the desire to tell the world you’re in a monogamous relationship part of it.

But legally? We married when it all got a bit messy with IHT and pensions and all that. Just safer.

Weddings can be a waste of money.

Marriage is not.

We got married 44 years ago. I was 25 and DH was 23. We were madly in love, wanted to spend the rest of our lives together and did not want to live together. We wanted to show our commitment to each other by marrying

We got married 5 months after we met. We had no money so our wedding cost very little. We got married in a registry office and then had a small party for friends and some family which our parents paid for.

We were, and still are, strong believers in marriage. His parents were married for 56 years before his dad died and my parents for 67 years before they died. My parents, in particular, were very very happy and still very much in love until they day they died.

An essential rule of wedding arranging:

The quality of the cake and the quantity of carats does not indicate the quality of the commitment.

There are two examples of women in my own life I think of when this conversation comes up.

First, a woman in her fifties, with her partner 20+ years, no children. He owned his own successful business and they lived in a home he had inherited. He died suddenly with no will and she had no legal right to her home or the business. Marriage would have greatly reduced the upheaval she experienced.

Second is a woman, early 60s, her long term partner died suddenly while abroad. She had no legal rights to talk to doctors, organise bringing his body home, his family chose the funeral arrangements instead of her etc.

We all think these things won't happen to us.

I wanted to be my husbands next of kin.

No reason for marriage in our relationship. Been together 13 years. Financially independent. No kids. Wills leaving everything to each other. Pensions left to each other. Maybe we’ll get married later on in life (currently in our forties) but see no good reason to do it now.

As you work in child protection/family law, you could request some training on the legal implications of marriage. Then you will understand it for both work and personal reasons, win win.

I am not being facetious or suggesting you should already know this, just pointing out that you are better placed than most in terms of available resources to learn what you need to know.

Well for me, I got married because it meant me and my now DH could live together, sleep together etc. I'm also religious so that was another factor.

But for people who are already living together and have kids I genuinely don't understand why they bother.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I guess, in my job as a manager of CAFCASS, it's about the welfare and wellbeing of children. Less about the adults and inheritance tax etc.

Sole focus on the children. Not sure they'd fund my training on a this ...but thanks for the advice

Thanks for the input guys.
All interesting, I guess when I ask people in the real world about this, the natural response is "love" or "commitment" ... (i believe we have both without marriage) ... nobody has ever said to me "oh for inheritance or tax reasons"

So it's always interesting to see others point of view. Equally the thread shows (as always) people cannot read other people's experiences and hear their views. Some people have explained very well why marriage doesn't benefit them and their situation, something some of you could do we reading and hearing rather than sitting on your high horse.

Obviously people will say love at the beginning. But love may often not endure. I am not being taken for a ride by anyone.

Women (usually) who have babies and then give up work or go part time are very financially vulnerable if they aren’t married. You see it over and over on posts on here. That may not be the case for you personally, but it’s good protection.

I thought it was about love and commitment and forming a new family.

Idiot.

Most expensive financial decision I have ever made and so much stress to extricate myself from, so I could protect my children.

I followed all the "rules". Did everything "right". Years of dating before moving in, years of living together before marriage. Years of marriage before children.

Far from offering protection, it could well have bankrupted me and left me unable to provide for my children as well.

I am very clear with my children that marriage is a legal contract about assets. Do they want to give half of their belongings to someone else? That they can have a relationship or not, have children or not, spent their life with someone or not, love someone all their life and be in a committed relationship with them or not, and that marriage is not necessary for any of those things. I hope neither fall into the same trap that I did.

There are HUGE differences in IHT if you are married or not. Nobody wants to think about death but it’s inevitable one day. Why let HMRC have tens of thousands of pounds of your money instead of getting married?

Weddings don’t have to be expensive or showy. They are show of commitment of a union between 2 partners. The family unit in western cultures is slowly being eroded. Motherhood attracts criticism, women are being encouraged to despise men. The differences between men and women and their roles in the family are no longer celebrated and fewer women are choosing to have children. It’s all part of the same theme. More and more children are growing up without role models or a sense of direction. Successive generations are selfish and only care about themselves and the latest selfie they took or how they appear on social media. It’s no wonder suicide rates are at an all time high.

It can have legal implications re children too. Eg seeing the recent thread re birth certificates lots don’t seem to realise an unmarried dad can’t just add himself to his child’s bc.
Ok if mum is alive and conscious but what if she’s died in childbirth or in a coma. Unmarried dad needs to apply to court, married dad can just register the birth. Latter is easier when grieving and caring for a newborn.
At stressful time of life having that piece of paper often makes things smoother especially if abroad or there are family issues eg family would take over and do funeral how they wanted.
This is an example of type of issues this lady faced when her partner died. Slightly out of date as unmarried partners can now get bereavement support allowance.
www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7334313/amp/I-never-felt-marriage-important-day-Paolo-died.html

@MidnightLibraryCard - Most expensive financial decision. I am so sorry this is your experience!

This is the experience I hear about more frequently. Women that have independence, built a future, and frankly have all their chickens in order, then being rinsed and left worst off from divorce.

..., I hear about what others are saying about how marriage gives women security, but when as women, you hold the babies and all the financial cards... im not sure marriage is always as lucrative as many on this thread seek to portray. My partner is AWFUL with money, and I guarantee if we were to marry and later divorce, he'd have nothing besides a pension for me to go after, despite me probably picking up most the child related things.

Fortunately, I hope, he isn't the kinda man to be bitter and try and pull the rug from under my feet!

Because people cheat and leave their partners is the very reason marriage is important, for the legal protection. It provides. Wills can be changed, insurance and pension beneficiaries altered. No amount of bits of paper can fully replicate the legal protections of marriage, it might not be for you. And that’s fine, but for the love of god find out what the implications are before making that decision.

A wedding doesn’t have to be expensive, we got married in a bar (it’s where we had our first date), had a small number of guests and opted to have the usual menu so people could order what they wanted whenever they wanted it.

Its only been legal to get married in the UK since 2014, it took decades of protests, outreach work and fighting to finally allowed to get married, I wasn’t going to fight for something and not do it myself.

Legally for us marriage makes no difference where we live, no inheritance tax etc here, but it’s important when travelling, when we lived in the UK it made adopting our daughter easier, if we hadn’t been married our relationship wouldn’t have passed our LAs relationship length requirements, bizarrely no length requirement if you’re married. Financially we earn a very similar amount and bought similar assets into the relationship, so unless things change drastically in the future we’ll remain on fairly similar income levels etc.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships

Stats for opposite sex civil partnership. Most popular with 55-64 age group. When you are young death/IHT probably isn’t on radar. In this bracket you start going to funerals and it focuses the mind. In many cases they won’t have told anyone but it can save a huge amount in tax.

OP everything my husband and I have, we built together. Even if it ended in divorce due to a fault on one side, it would still be a fair split. I can't say I'd feel the same if it deprived our kids of a home, but there is no separate money to resent sharing.

That aside it mainly makes a difference for immigration and inheritance tax.

Why you'd want to marry with previous ones + existing kids I have no idea unless it's for one of the above reasons.

But doesn’t the financial security of the mother directly impact the welfare of the children?