Why get married?

[Needmynailsdone]

So have been with my partner 16 years. Childhood sweethearts, 2 kids under 2, early 30s. I see a lot of discourse online about why we should be married and why it’s stupid to have kids with someone you’re not married to, but aside from pension / life insurance stuff (which I’m the nominated beneficiary for), I don’t really understand the need. We both quite like the idea of it, it’s just generally not come up yet as we’ve been busy travelling, working on our careers and now the babies. What were your reasons for wanting to get married?

Marriage is also internationally recognised and is very straightforward for people to immediately grasp the relationship. A partner could be a 20 year relationship or 2 weeks. Much easier to be able to tell a hospital, funeral parlour, tax man etc that this is your husband/wife.

When someone dies, a relative needs to register the death unless there are no relatives. Even if you've been living together for 30 years, you are not a "relative" so e.g. an estranged sister or cousin who barely knew the deceased gets precedence over a long-term partner.

Yeah can’t imagine this being a problem, but you never know! Maybe TikTok will radicalise them 😂

We got married because it was a lovely romantic thing to do and we both wanted the life experience, very glad we did

also year before twice family invited just me to their weddings despite us being together for 5 years and living together and we felt that a few family members would respect ( or at the very least could not dismiss) our same sex union a lot more if we made it public and legal , again very glad we did this and the support we felt for our relationship was overwhelming ( from most 😂👍)

There's a car crash. He is badly hurt. You are nothing to the hospital without some kind of contract. His parents or aunt or uncle make all the decisions. They don't even have to consult with you.

Get the paperwork.

That’s the best argument for getting married anyone could wish for.

This sums it all up! If you are the person who took time out to have babies it places you in the more vulnerable position - named beneficiaries can be changed and would be if you broke up. Personally, got married for love/romantic reasons but after kids I see the legal benefits as more important - why wouldn’t you want to protect the person you love and procreated with to the fullest possible manner. If children weren’t involved I wouldn’t be too pushed. Each to their own, but I would have felt it very naive to take a career break and create dependents with someone who wasn’t fully committed financially - putting your money where your mouth is the phase that comes to mind!

Following this thread with interest as I instinctively do not want to get married & never have. I’m the higher earner (3x more than OH) and he has no savings etc. We have one child. We rent & do not own a property. I don’t really plan on marrying him (or anyone else) 🤷🏻‍♀️ I have life insurance so that they’d be ok if I died.

Many people shrug or rant that marriage is 'just a piece of paper'. But I hope the previous 3 pages of posts have convinced you that it is a very important piece of paper for a range of reasons and that for nearly everyone, it is a very good piece of paper.
There are some other important pieces of paper: make sure that the deed to your property shows you both as joint tenants so that if something happens to one of you the other takes full control of the property without needing to do anything more than update the land registry. If you are tenants in kind you will have problems!
Find out who the beneficiaries of your DP's pension(s) are: you should be the main one as should he since the survivor will need all assets to support the DCs.
If you've read those posts you know what the legal implications are and you've heard about die-hard life partners who married with one on a hospital deathbed because that 'piece of paper' just steamrolls over all the complications and ensures that the surviving partner is treated equally. This is why second and third marriages take place: the couple values each other above all others.
As PPs have mentioned, the 'wedding ceremony' doesn't have to be a big deal. Just like when you signed the papers on your house, you could just marry quietly somewhere with a few random witnesses in a solicitor's office or at the registry office.

For me, I wanted to always be able to make the decision that works best for us as a unit rather than me individually.

E.g Partner A gets a job in a new city. Partner B can only get a lower paying job there but the household overall will be better off. If I was partner B I would only agree to this if married so all assets we built were legally ours jointly.

I have always had the opposite view, I don't understand why you wouldn't get married in your situation. It was important to me because there was always the niggle - why doesn't he want to marry me? (This was my issue, there was no reason to feel that way)

We managed to get married and still travel, work on careers etc. You want to or you don't, but there is time if it's important to you.

If we were not married and my husband or partner as he would be, died, then his brother would inherit all the money in the bank accounts in his name. And his huge pension fund. And I would really struggle to be able to afford to live in the same way as i do now.
I would also not be the only one consulted on donating organs, and even do we or don't we switch off the life support machine.
His brother and I are utterly different people and it would be an awful awful time.

But we are married, so I get all the money, and the final say in which organs get donated . And I won't have to pay tax as inheritance tax for married people is a good thing.

We do need to make Wills and he needs to register with the Organ Donation scheme.
Intestacy works for us as we have no kids.

All the differences legally between marriage and just house sharing are in this link. For me, I would not be just a girlfriend to any man, I wanted to legally be one another's family.

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/living-together-marriage-and-civil-partnership/living-together-and-marriage-legal-differences/

I think it’s personal. My marriage means the world to me, if you don’t feel strongly either way about getting married then you shouldn’t feel that you have to.

This is the most comprehensive, and convincing, summary I’ve read. Thank you! Will share with my partner

To protect both people. Both are working so it's not like one is not earning.

You are nominated beneficiary now but he can change that easily enough. Do you/he own a house in one name but you are both paying the bills? Have you had to change your work to fit around your children? If you took a salary hit is he bumping your pension contributions to ensure it's fair? Do you want to be able to make decisions for each other if one of you gets sick and can't make those decisions because if not married your parents get that honour. Inheritance tax.

OP, I wish you both long life and great health, but the status of spouse as NOK is very important when the chips are down. I know. If you don't get married, sort that out thoroughly.

Lots of other good points made about the finances. Being suddenly widowed (or effectivley widowed) is bad enough if things are straightforward, I can't imagine it with financial and legal complications. Again, I know.

I got married last month, I feel it's made not much difference to our relationship (been together 10 years) however, our wedding was an amazing day! My DH feels like he wants to spend more time with me since we got married and go to the pub less 😅

Not at all, it was always just an “in the future” conversation, and I’ve just had 2 babies in 2 years so we were pretty distracted to think about it! It’s only now the littlest is 6 months I’ve started to think it’s a good idea

I felt the same as you, then my partner got ill and was diagnosed with cancer. Suddenly it's all I wanted to do - felt like a bit of security. I'm very glad we did it.

Thank you, this makes sense. I’m sorry for what’s happened to you that means you know so much about this situation. It’s defo something I’m going to sort out in 2025!

My friends who are higher earners haven’t got married but probably will get married in their 60’s because of inheritance tax.

Mumsnet is massively in favour of marriage. It certainly didn’t help either of my divorced friends but it does depend individual circumstances.

Ah I’m so sorry to hear that and I hope you’re both doing okay x

A lot of women on here jump to the assumption that a woman is a low/lower earner and as such benefits financially from marriage and the protection it provides. In practice, if you earn similar amounts or the woman is the higher earner, the financial rationale isn’t there.