How can you get married if you are rich

[Randomer40]

I seriously dont understand how people do that in England.
Say you worked your ass off/got inheritance and you have 1.5M pounds and your spouse has no assets.

When you get married you essentially gift your spouse 750K (or more over time if they are low earner). You might love your spouse but you might still not want to gift them all those assets you worked hard for.

After 10 years of marriage you will have to split assets 50 50 or worse and a prenup is not much help.

How do people do it? How can anyone think that is fair to split assets that you earned while not even knowing your spouse.

I talked to a lawyer here in a beautiful EU country.
Law is reasonable and fair here:

What you bring in and inheritance stays with you. 5050 split of what is accrued in marriage. Spousal maintaince extremely rare.
Higher child maintance payments.

England is a joke.

Well, hopefully you can go and live in your beautiful EU country and keep all your lovely money to yourself and live happily ever after with a succession of different spouses.

I don't often feel like this but - if you don't like it, no-one is making you stay here.

Personally, I'll settle for my very average partnership between two very average earners who both started out with very little, have shared everything we earned for many years and are now comfortable but not loaded. If the unthinkable happens and one of us gets itchy feet and leaves, the other will be able to support themself as we've both paid our way the whole time. But neither of us would say that was the most important issue in what makes our relationship work.

Maybe I'll just never understand how rich people think.

You're leaving out love here. I would have married if divorce was illegal even. For many of us, whether idealistically or not, marriage is a permanent state of merging of lives.

If I was worried that I'd be disadvantaged in a divorce, to the extent of put me off marrying, that's probably a good sign that I'm not committed enough to marry them.

The marriage vows do state that 'all that I have is yours' and in the CofE wording, parties to marriage are explicitly warned in the ceremony that is not to be entered into lightly.

That being said, 10 years into marriage, I can understand that someone's even the best intentioned marriages fall apart, often not through the fault of either party. I'm glad that the law means neither of us will be destitute if something terrible happens to our marriage, in the same way that I wouldn't want him left destitute after my death.

We have built a life together. He may pay more for one thing, and me another, or him pay not overall but me work less because of the kids etc. There may not be equality financially, but there is equality of effort. I guess I don't think money is particularly important once you get beyond the basics anyway tbh. There are many more important things in marriage.

Marriage simply invites the state into the relationship.
That's reason enough for many intelligent people not to even entertain it!

But then the simple answer is not to get married. It isn't compulsory.

If the woman is wealthy enough that her lifestyle won't be impacted if the marriage fails and she is left caring for the children, then why would she want to get married in the first place?

We are all adults, we all know the rules. We all make our own choices.

OP, if your partner is pushing you to get married and your instinct is telling you that his motives are financial, just say no thanks. Don't take the risk.

I was interested in a pp description on the 'choice' of marriage contract available in France. Having a choice does make a lot of sense, especially as people marry at different stages of their lives and may come with differing levels of assets.

Is that concept in place anywhere else in the world? It shouldn't have to be an 'all or nothing' contract, I don't think.

So true, no one should feel obliged to get married. However, we live in a society where marriage is the done thing, and there is perhaps something missing if you remain unmarried.

A poster above said if you don't marry it's because you aren't really committed.

So if you are richer, you are risking your money if you marry. If you are both equal that risk is much lower. So you can marry without thinking about divorcé consequences- I am not sure that says one person is more committed than another, just there is much less financial consequences if it doesn't work out so much less risky to do it.

I wouldn’t put myself in the position of giving up years of working to raise a family if I wasn’t entitled to a decent share of everything.