Why should I get married?

[JustPutSomeGlitterOnIt]

Whenever I read threads on here, there seems to be a large consensus who think it's unwise to have chn outside of marriage.

Why is this?

Me and my man have 3 chn together, I'm mid twenties, he's late 30s.

I'd happily get married mainly to please my Catholic family, but I'm not too fussed either way.

He doesn't like the idea because he thinks it's 'pointless' (irrelevant argument if you ask me because by that reasoning, it wouldn't do any harm even if it wouldn't do any active good. But whatever, he doesn't want to.)

We keep our finances separate, I prefer it that way, and split everything in half.
We both work FT; of course, when I'm not on ML.
I'm employed, he's self employed.
We rent privately. I have more in savings and a higher level of education than him.

We live inner city in a pretty liberal area so the social side doesn't bother me.

Am I being mighty naive here?
Are me or my chn at risk if it all goes tits up?
What am I missing here?

Please fill me in; I don't want to be potentially blindly walking into a difficult situation one day.

There can be issues later in life OP, to do with wills or even if he were to become very ill and be in hospital, you would not have the right to choose if his life support was turned off.

There are however, some legal steps you can take in life to ensure that in these sort of events, you would have the power to make decisions based on your partnership.

Since you don't own property, it's less complex at the moment but were you to buy or if one of you amassed a lot of money, it would be worth seeking legal advice.

Not everyone wants to marry and that's fine.

OP - generally, marriage is useful to protect women’s financial position if/when things go pear-shaped.
At this point - you don’t own anything and work full time.

However, with (three) kids - often women take a bit of a step back in their career - as school holiday, pick-ups, illnesses need someone to be there - so (some, many) women over time self-select out of more pressured, time-consuming, travel-requiring jobs.
So - women take a hit in their earning potential over time.
And - if one day they become ‘stay at home’ - then even more so.

Marriage doesn’t change the commitment of a relationship. It is an economic institution. And a very useful one in this country that doesn’t recognise ‘common law marriage’ - say the way Scandinavian counties do.

As an aside - I for one would be 😳 if a man wanted to have kids with me and didn’t want to marry me IF that was something important to me. I’d wonder what else he is not willing to share with me, and what options he is hoping to keep open.

Right ok. Thank you.
It's strange. Marriage comes across as such a romantic idea but it seems like it's basically a legal arrangement to me.

I think it's becoming less relevant OP. Many, many people are uncomfortable with that idea but it's true.

If you think you can pay for a single household and all the childcare alone without a penny from him, it's less of an issue. You may be paying 50/50 now but if you split you could be paying 100% alone. That's how it often is for women.

Also, it seems a lot of the reasons are aimed at protecting the woman and her upkeep here (assuming she's the lesser earner / doing more parenting).

What's in it for the man?

I think when everything’s going well it doesn’t change much. When things go wrong it can offer more legal protection or just make things easier as you are automatically recognised as next of kin.

I’ve seen friends and family suffer further stress in already bad situations because they weren’t married and I wanted to try and avoid that for us.

Clay that definitely happens...but I've seen and indeed am seeing right now, a married friend of mine going through hell.

Her husband has upped and walked out...he's left her and their teens in a house they jointly own...with a MASSIVE mortgage and it's been remortgaged twice.

He in the meantime has moved in with his fancy-woman.

So my friend is left in a house she can't pay for alone...he'd insisted on remortgaging to get the business going. The business that's now doing ok...but which he owns.

Yes...she can probably sell the house but she will have nothing left...but debt.

He's moving in with his girlfriend and geting his name on the mortgage of a new house.

What will protect my friend? She works full time and always has...but their house is not their house. He kept telling her "It will be fine! The business will get going and I will pay it all off"

Well...the business has got going but what's his plan? I doubt he'll be helping my friend buy anywhere. Their kids are grown up too.

In fact...can anyone tell me what's likely to happen to her? I need to support her and any advice I can get from you guys might help her.

It's all VERY fresh at the moment and she is in shock. :(

Cheap, she needs to speak to a solicitor. And hopefully a good one. That's the only advice you should be giving her about her legal situation. The amount of incorrect and emotional based 'advice' spouted as legal fact in these situations by well meaning friends and families is at best misleading and at worst seriously damaging to a persons legal position.

So get her to a solicitor. And maybe help research which ones have a good rep.

There are small tax advantages when alive, but the big difference is when one dies. Whatever assets are left to the surviving partner will be liable for full inheritance tax, if you are married none is payable. So if for example you own a house together one one dies, the other then has to pay a significant proportion of the value of the house to hmrc.
There are issues around transfer of pensions to surviving parter too...
Note to self - must sort out wills and get married!

Lamp yes...good point. I hope he's not such an arse as I suspect he's going to be though.

Bumper I've heard that too...I think it's shocking. The state prefers to make sure people stick to the status quo....can't have people running around and living in sin!

It's advice you are seeing being given to mums on mumsnet. Not necessarily everyone ever. It helps to ensure that a woman earning little to no money due to looking after children isn't blindly living in a house in the partner's name thinking she can't be chucked out in the event of a split.

Only married fathers get automatic parental responsibility for the children of that marriage. Otherwise he has to apply for it.

The inheritance tax implications aren’t just for transfers from one spouse to another. If you’re married you double how much the last surviving spouse can give to children before paying tax.

It protects a man who gives up work to look after children in the same way it does a woman if they then divorce.

You can share the amount on which you pay no income tax if at any point either of you is a low earner.

So yes mainly financial and legal benefits.

Even so I wasn’t that fussed about getting married before having kids. I’d lived through my parents divorcing twice. But now we are engaged and pregnant I see some more benefits. I’m desperately excited to declare to the world that he is my husband, I’ll be so proud. I am a bit sick of introducing him at hospital appointments as my fiance. And the biggest one is that I think we’ll just feel like more of a team.

When I discussed with my friends who have been together 15+ years and married around 10 why hey did it and what was good about it, being a team was their main feeling.

‘Marriage doesn’t change the commitment of a relationship.’

Actually it can. We were in much the same situation as yourself, been together 10yrs, 2kids, both working, when we decided to get married. Tbh we’d always planned on getting married but the money always seemed more useful for other things.
Something changed when we got married. It’s weird can’t really explain it. It felt like committing further I guess, odd baring in mind we’d been together and got 2kids but that’s just how it felt.

@ClareB83 - ‘You can share the amount on which you pay no income tax if at any point either of you is a low earner.’
Where do you find this??

Marriage provides you with more legal protections if he were to leave you. It would also make inheritance tax free when one if you died.

*legal protections for both of you

@lollipop

I think she’s referring to the Marital Tax Allowance: www.gov.uk/married-couples-allowance

If one of you earns a low wage, you can transfer some of your tax free allowance to your spouse to pay less tax overall.

It's strange. Marriage comes across as such a romantic idea but it seems like it's basically a legal arrangement to me.

Me too. We married for the legal protection it offered. Nothing else changed. We kept separate finances and names etc. Works for us.

@Lollipop30 it’s the Marriage Allowance www.gov.uk/marriage-allowance

The married couples allowance is only for people born before 1935.

If one of you dies suddenly the legal situation is much more straightforward if married, and more financial protection for the lower earner if you divorce.
You can get married cheaply so for me the question is more "if you are committed to someone enough to have kids with them why would you not marry them?"

The married couples allowance is only for people born before 1935

Yep - but it was replaced not abolished www.gov.uk/marriage-allowance

DH is a SAHD and this saves us a little extra.

Mostly we decided on marriage for additional legal protection for ourselves and any children - didn't want there to be any uncertainty about next of kin or custody if anything happened to either of us, particularly me in the case of custody. Also yes, if either of you is ever unable to earn as much as you do now they'll be 'safer' in a marriage than a long term relationship.

You should only get married if you want to. Don't do it please anyone else