What would be the positives of being married

[Thechickenisburning]

Dp and I together since we were 17, now mid 40’s.
Mortgage/house is in both our names, cars in both our names, shared bank account and similar earnings, one Dc & one Ddog

Please can anyone tell me why it would be better to be married and list the reasons

Or is it better not to be?

Have you talked to a solicitor about it? Made proper wills and NOK arrangements?
The only thing you can’t replicate is IHT provision.

Inheritance Tax (IHT) Exemption:

• Assets can be transferred between spouses or civil partners completely free of IHT, both during their lifetime and upon death.
• Cohabiting couples do not have this exemption and may face a 40% IHT bill on inherited assets above the nil-rate band (£325,000 for an individual).

Transferable Inheritance Tax Allowance:

• A surviving spouse or civil partner can inherit the deceased's unused IHT allowance, effectively doubling their own tax-free threshold to £650,000.
• If a main residence is also left to direct descendants, they can also transfer the Residence Nil-Rate Band (RNRB), potentially increasing the combined tax-free allowance to £1 million.
• Cohabiting couples cannot transfer any of these allowances.

Capital Gains Tax (CGT) Exemption:

• Spouses and civil partners can transfer assets (like property or investments) between themselves free of CGT. This allows for tax-efficient planning, such as using both partners' annual CGT allowances (£3,000 each in 2024/25) before selling an asset.
• For cohabiting couples, transferring assets is considered a disposal, which may trigger a CGT liability.

Marriage Allowance:

• This allows a lower earner to transfer £1,260 of their personal allowance to their spouse or civil partner, as long as the higher earner is a basic rate taxpayer.
• This can result in a tax saving of up to £252 per year for the couple. This benefit is not available to cohabiting couples.
• State Pension Benefits:
• Under the old state pension system, a non-working or low-earning partner could use their spouse's National Insurance contributions to qualify for a full basic state pension. While this is less relevant under the new system, there are still rules for those who reached state pension age before April 6, 2016.

If a spouse or civil partner dies, the surviving partner may be able to inherit a portion of their state pension, depending on when they reached state pension age.

Pension Sharing on Death:

• Many private and workplace pension schemes automatically treat a surviving spouse or civil partner as a beneficiary, allowing them to inherit a pension pot tax-free or with a reduced tax charge.
• Cohabiting partners may not have this automatic right and the pension may become part of the deceased's taxable estate.

The there are the financial implications for divorce but I’m assuming that’s not your primary concern rn

If the house is owned as joint tenants there is no his half / your half. You both own 100%. If you own as joint tenants it automatically belongs to you if the other owner dies. It does not need to go through probate. Being married does not affect this. It's the ownership of the house.
If however you own as tenants in common you can each stipulate in your will what happens to your share of the house.

In the UK a death should be registered by a relative if there is one. Even if you've lived together for 50 years legally you are not a relative, so a member of his family would need to register your partner's death instead.

I get the sense OP is talking financially. OP doesn't say they have any relationship problems.

I clicked YABU (not sure why you left the poll) because Money Saving Expert website has repeatedly shared information about the financial benefits of being married:

https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2025/01/martin-lewis--the-nine-big-financial-benefits-of-being-married/

We married just for the legal side, only the cost of the registration and basic ceremony with two witnesses in the smallest register office room available. Bargain to protect our future and our children's inheritance.

The person present at the time of death can register a death.

This may not be a popular view but I think marriage makes you into a unit in a way that cohabitation does not. However shared your finances are.

Please make sure you have a will. And please see a lawyer to check everything else. Don’t want to go into detail as too outing but never make the mistake of believing there is such a thing as a common law wife. Sometimes the worst really does happen and it makes a heartbreaking time even harder.

The IHT thing:

If your house is worth more than £650k (two ‘nil rate’ amounts) then the surviving partner would need to pay IHT on the deceased partners estate if they inherit it. But not if married.

However, you can get round this by each leaving your half to the Dc but with a life interest for the surviving partner to live in it.

You each get the extra £175k nil rate by leaving your house the Dc whether married or not.

BUT if your house is owned as ‘joint tenants’ the whole house automatically belongs to the survivor. So can’t be left direct to Dc.

You could change it to ‘tenants in common’

You do have a Will?

You need a Will! And discuss all this with the solicitor.

Put each other as Next of Kin on medical notes. Have each other as Lasting Power of Attorney (something else everyone needs)

If you have everything sorted legally and have equal savings, pensions etc, there is little to be gained from getting married.

Doesn’t matter whether it’s unpopular or not if you can provide evidence!

Everything that everyone else has written unless you are in the sort of position my friend is.

She has a very well paid job and excellent pension, her self employed partner has no pension provision at all. As we are up North though they jointly own a big house it will be under current IHT thresholds.

Yes, but only if there's no relative who can do it. So a brother or cousin say, in preference to a long-term partner.

If the patriarchy had intended marriage to be advantageous to women they wouldn’t have invented it.

But they absolutely can do it if they were present at the death.

The next of kin thing is a myth. Next of kin has no legal meaning in the UK and pretty much all healthcare staff will take someone’s cohabiting partner as the obvious person to share information with, if they do it at all.

If your DP is in an accident then currently his next of kin (parents, siblings) will make decisions rather than you.

Plus all the financial reasons above.

Conversely what are the reasons NOT to marry?

• It can be more complicated and expensive to split up: but at least there is a process that decides on asset splits/where kids live etc if you can’t agree. If unmarried and you split, you have no recourse if he is a shit about finances/kids etc.
• Your assets, like his, will go into the marital pot to be shared out on any divorce. This may be a disadvantage for you if you are the higher earner or have other assets (tho assets from before the marriage are sometimes carved out of the pot). It’s a benefit for you however if you are the lower earner especially if this is due to having taken on the majority of childcare/house responsibilities.
• errr can’t think of any other downsides

I think that’s true if the partner is the only person around or if there’s no disagreement. However if the parents show up and have a different opinion then being unmarried will make it a lot harder to have your voice heard.

For me it’s security. While I’m the breadwinner, if anything happened to either of us the remaining person would have a lot more control over assets etc, that otherwise would go to their legal next of kin.

U get an expensive dress and expensive day out an expensive party and an expensive piece of paper then you can start saving for the expensive divorce lol

That's nothing that can't be fixed with a will.

What an ignorant post.

Your OP omits important information like:

• your personal income, assets;
• your work history/situation;
• how those have compared to your DP’s since becoming parents.

For example if you’re personally wealthy, eg high income, own a property, and worked full time after becoming a mother, whereas DP has not, he would have more financially to gain than you would from marriage/divorce.

Many of us are not wealthy and expected motherhood to mean penalties in terms of work and income, penalties not faced by most fathers, so wanted financial security of marriage, before DC.

Here's all the differences between just being housemates and the legal document of marriage.

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

What's ignorant about the truth