This is my pledge to Yorkiegirl ....

[moaningpaper]

This is my pledge to Yorkiegirl .... (well to my family really)

I WILL swallow my horror at the whole wife thing and get married in the next 12 months so that my family has more legal protection.

Who wants to join me?

There are some legal changes underway. the Law Commission is currently considering which changes to make for cohabitees in case of relationship breakdown or death.

And there ARE ways of protecting yourself legally if you're not married, I have been looking into this, we're not married, and we have wondered if we should for the legal reasons. But there are other ways of getting some legal and financial protection. Making wills, making sure if you buy a house it's in both your names are the crucial ones I think.

see Living together campaign it tells you what you need to do.

They don't give all the protection you get if you're married but I think for me and DP they give enough, given that we really do hate the idea of being married.

For anyone whose total estate is worth more than the inheritance tax threshold (about £170,000 at the moment) it's a financial mistake not to get married - it's not right but that's the way it is at the moment.
Most people will get their mortgage paid off plus some life assurance when they die so you only need to have a very modest house plus life cover to be worth more than you think.
Gifts between spouses at death are free of inheritance tax - for anyone else they're not and there's 40% tax to pay.
I still don't understand what all the fuss is about - I'm a feisty old bag with a life of my own - I'm certainly not 'tied' to dh any more by a scrap of paper than I am by the fact that we've got 2 children and own a house together. You just book up at the registry office 3 weeks in advance and get down there for 25 mins with whatever the payment is these days.
You really don't need to make any more of it than a trip to the dentist if you don't want to!

SueJones: "But those who say that we should be campaigning for a civil partnership for hetero couples like the civil partnership for same sex couples - isn't that a registery office wedding? I don't see how it is different if you don't like the term wedding or marriage, call it civilly partnered because thats exactly what it is."

No it isn't the same. A civil partnership is a legal agreement only to make you civil partners. A marriage makes you husband and wife with all the implications that has.

Lots of gay people actually DON'T like the civil partnerships law. E.g. Peter Tatchell writes:

"Instead of legislating a second-rate version of marriage for gays only, the government could have created a truly modern system of partnership rights for everyone, covering all relationships of mutual care and commitment."

Another thing I hate is the way that, when people say they have just got married, people say "Congratulations!" as though they have made some huge achievement. No one says THAT when you announce that you've just got a joint mortgage.

i never realised marriage was a big thing to my kids, i thought they always saw us as stable but after we got married they both said they were really happy because now we werent going to split up. made me quite sad to think they had worries about that before as i didnt have a clue they felt that way

This is quite a sobering thread.
We are planning to get wed, it was going to be this November but as I'm pregnant it will have to wait until next year.

moaningpaper - I truly don't have a strong view about it one way or the other as its not currently relevant to me. But I still don't understand what the practical difference is - "A marriage makes you husband and wife with all the implications that has." My question earlier genuinely was to try to find out what "all the implications" are but so far no-one has been able to tell me anything differnt than a civil partnership. I'm not saying there aren't any differences, just that I don't know what they are.

If the difference is society's view, then I can't believe the government is going to set up a new, but identical in substance, contract which is the same in practical terms but different in title to marriage.

Am I being obtuse? Am I missing something?

As far as I'm aware, there are no differences between civil partnership and being married - you have to say all the same words, make the same legally binding promises and go through the same legal hassle if you want to get divorced! It's exactly the same, just not called marriage.

But happy to be corrected if I'm wrong!

No it isn't the same. A civil partnership is a legal agreement only to make you civil partners. A marriage makes you husband and wife with all the implications that has.

What are the husband and wife implications that don't apply to civil partners?

Dottydot - the aunt of a good friend of mine was civilly partnered recently after 30 years of living with her partner but gets really corss with you if you call her "married", she insists she is "civilly partnered". What do you refer to yourself as (just being nosy you understand )

If you're grown up enough to have a child together, your relationship is stable and neither parent is violent, abusive or drunk then I reckon it's just immature not to pop down to the registry office. What 'implications' are there that are so much more important than the child you've chosen to bring into the world? Rightly or wrongly children feel happier if their parents are married - that's a fact.

Fortyplus, the inheritance tax threshold is about £270,000 at the moment. So if you and your DP have house + assets worth over £540,000 then yes there will be inheritance tax on what you inherit over that sum. Which I think is quite an issue in London but not for many of us elsewhere.

as for getting married because children may feel happier, I see it as part of our job to broaden our children's horizons, not to conform to their Peter-and-Jane inspired view of how life should be.

Well of course it would be much more enlightening for my children if I lived with another woman but I've never fancied them myself

Haven't read YG's thread, will look for it

Just wanted to say that if you intend to get married you can have this written into your will so that you don't have to re-do it when you marry. Hulababy's DH did mine and DPs wills a couple of months ago, the beginning of them says something like "This is the last Will of NAAM and it is written with the intention of my forthcoming marriage to (name), hereafter referred to as my husband"

Fortyplus. Why do you say immature? As a product of a very bad marriage i don't think it is immature to not get married.

Dottydot "As far as I'm aware, there are no differences between civil partnership and being married - you have to say all the same words, make the same legally binding promises and go through the same legal hassle if you want to get divorced! It's exactly the same, just not called marriage."

Why isn't it called marriage then?

Because marriage is something MORE, we understand it to be something MORE, there would have been a lot more opposition if we had called it marriage, because so many people believe that marriage is something "special" between a man and a woman - i.e. basically the religious view of marriage as a sacrament, bestowed by God (well to be theologically accurate, marriage is a sacrament bestowed by each of the partners to each other). Whether or not there is anything different in the legalities behind it is irrelevant. It is the symbolism and the cultural expectations that are significant.

Do you congratulate friends if they tell you they have just got married? Why?

You don't say the same words, or make the same promises (see below). You just sign a bit of paper.

Rightly or wrongly children feel happier if their parents are married - that's a fact.

Well wouldn't it be GREAT to bring up children who DON'T have this fantasy? Gosh there are athesists among you DESPERATE to strip children of their beliefs in any divine fairytales, but quite happy to let them stew in this fairytale of "secure" and "ever lasting" love. It's unrealistic. Which of course ends in devastated children who DO have to see their parents get divorced. And obsessed women living in some bridal princess fantasy about being saved by their good prince and carried off into the happyeverafter.

drosophila & moaningpaper of course it's not a perfect world and I'd be the first one to agree that many marriages are hell. The point I was making was that if you're in a stable relationship and have children I can't see why it's such a big deal to get married. I know that 2 out of 3 marriages end in divorce, but I heard a figure quoted that 75% of unmarried couples with children split up before the child is 5. So I think if you don't want to get married it probably means you're not prepared to commit to that person.
I'm not saying that everyone with children should get married. Personally I didn't feel that it would make any difference - it was just a legal nicety that we were happy to undertake as we were quite happy cohabiting.
And sorry if it sounds like a 'fantasy' to have a family with 2 parents who feel some sort of obligation to the family unit and are quite happy with the idea of living with the same person for a life time.
I think too many people - married or not - have unrealistic romantic expectations and split up without considering the children.

ps If you've read what I posted earlier you'll see that I'm NOT into fantasy weddings - just a quick trip to the registry office.

But if you want to float down the aisle looking like a giant meringue that would be fine by me!

Rubbish. I have been with my dp for 20 years, I have supported him through his PhD, I have spent a vast chunk of my adult life with him. To say someone is not prepared to commit to someone else is rubbish. WHy should the ONLY method of commitment be marriage.

mp: on why isn't civil partnership called marriage - it's to keep the right-wingers from exploding of course. But it is marriage in all but name - I thought we'd established on a thread the other week that marriage doen't really have any promises either, or doesn't have to? The act of signing the bit of paper is commitment in itself.

But I do agree about marriage NOT being about making your kids happier. and about not perpetuating the myths that go with it. You're right. But some marriages really are happy, especially, I think, those where the expectations in the first place are not unreasonable.

okay I am skimming this because it is making me so cross - I promised myself it wouldn't but it does

you know I'm going to stop pretending that being married has made no difference to my relationship because I think that's what I ought to say to answer these ridiculous arguments about housework and cultural expectation

my marriage is at the centre of my family life - it is the reason I have children. I don't talk about my relationship - I talk about my marriage because it does mean something to me, it means that dh and I stood up and said we make a commitment to making this work, we have loved one another for years and this is the most important thing that we have.

I don't think it makes my children stew in a mire of expectation and fantasy. I grew up in a divorced family, I know it can go wrong. I don't want it to go wrong for my children, but wanting us all to have a happy life is not my way of trying to pull the wool over their eyes by tricking them with my fairytale existence.

Co-habiting relationships split up. Statistically more than marriages. I'm sure it's just as devastating for those children as it is for those whose parents were married.

And as for all this codswallop about doing more housework - if there are statistics for this that are inarguable, do they actually mean that all married women fall into this trap? Or is there more to see behind the statistics?

Could it possibly mean that co-habiting couples might tend to be younger, and both working, and therefore share the housework more (or just not do it because they are young and it doesn't bother them) whereas people may marry later and have children, make a decision for the mother to take part-time hours and be a SAHM, and therefore do more housework?

I do do more housework since I have been married, yes. But this is because I had kids and gave up working full-time, so I'm at home more, not because I had a wedding ceremony!

Blackduck I think I'd probably be the same, but that's the thing with sweeping generalisations, isn't it? 75% might split up in 5 years, but that leaves 25% who don't.
I just remember making enquiries and finding out (13 years ago so might be different now) that if I died my partner wouldn't automatically get custody of our child and if he died I wouldn't automatically receive his pension.
So half an hour at the registry office seemed like a small price to pay for that security.
I don't think the fact that we're still happy together has anything whatsoever to do with the piece of paper in the filing cabinet - which is why I can't understand why people get so worked up about going to get it.

about cohabitees being more likely to split up:

More cohabitees do split up, certainly. But there is plenty of research on this, especially recently. There are various sorts of cohabitees, some people just happen to be living together casually, and maybe get pregnant by accident. Others, like some of those on this thread, have been together for decades, mutually committed, and very stable. Others are cohabiting because one or both has already had a bad experience of marriage or divorce.

On average, cohabitees tend to be young, in uncommitted relationships, and it's fairly obvious that those couples are more likely to split up than the average married couple which has (at least at one point) made a mutual decision to stay together. That doesn't mean that the long term mutually committed cohabitees are any more likely to split up than their married friends.

One other reason cohabitees might be more likely to split up is that they are likely to have a different view of relationships, for example they are far less likely to have a religious affiliation. So in that case they might be more likely to split up, and less likely to stay together for the sake of religious or social expectations. But the act of getting married isn't going to make those people different in their belief systems, so getting cohabitees married isn't going to make them more committed or less likely to split up.

ah fennel using my own argument against me - that there is more to statistics than the numbers

and what you say: "On average, cohabitees tend to be young, in uncommitted relationships" was exactly my theory about housework, wasn't it?

On the housework issue, there are a few recent research papers on this too. There is some evidence that people in cohabiting relationships do tend to have (on average) more egalitarian relationships, and that there is a tendency for this to change at the point of getting married.

This doesn't mean that for any given couple, getting married will change their housework system. Just that on average it tends to, over the whole population.

And it doesn't mean that getting married will turn a feminist into a non-feminist. but on average, fewer feminists are married than non-feminists. So there is quite a big group of people with egalitarian ideals who are cohabiting rather than marrying as part of a wider egalitarian or feminist belief system.