What is the benefit of being married if...

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Advance apologies if this is the wrong place to post.

Just wondering what the benefits are if being married if you have children if:

• You both earn, similar-ish amounts and both work PT to look after younger ones
• you have joint mirror wills leaving each other everything
• you bought your property together and are named as 'joint tenants' so regardless of who put in what you get the same out if you split and sell
• you have your own personal documents signed and dated by both declaring that in the event of a split you would like all assets to be split as though you were married with the exception of xyz, and define that there too (fairly minor stuff)
• you are each named as the beneficiary of each others pension

I know I wouldn't have the legal final say if DP was on his deathbed, but that aside is there anything else significant we are missing out on?

I see stuff about how important it is to be married, esp with children in the family, but we're not keen on marriage at the moment so have set up the above as our safety net, so interested in what additional stuff marriage would bring

Thanks!

• Next of kin stuff for hospital as you said
• widow payments (though this is possibly changing)
• somebody contesting the will (close family member) might have greater leverage
• you’d have to constantly update your will to ensure all assets etc are included and up to date

I’m sure there’s more stuff I haven’t thought of

You cannot open Letters of Administration for his estate nor even choose a headstone.

There are also tax implications here.

If you inherit money or property from an unmarried partner, you are not exempt from paying inheritance tax, as married couples are.

Debt is also another issue. You are liable for any debts which are in your own name only, but not for any debts which are just in your partner's name.

You may be responsible for the whole of debts in joint names and for other debts for which you have 'joint and several' legal responsibility. For example, in England and Wales, if you owe council tax, you and your partner will both be responsible for the debt, regardless of whether one of you contributes or not.

If your partner has a debt for which you have acted as guarantor, you will also be held legally responsible for paying it. If you're married, you will not be responsible for any financial obligations or debts that your partner had before you were married.

If you're an unmarried partner, you can be called as a witness for or against the other partner in both civil and criminal cases. You can be forced to appear and give evidence.

This spells it out clearly too:-
www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/living-together-marriage-and-civil-partnership/living-together-and-marriage-legal-differences/

You may not always earn similar amounts.
Your partner could change their will without you knowing.
How did you assure yourselves that the personal documents you signed would be legally binding? Could your partner destroy them without you knowing and would you have any evidence that they had existed?
What's the benefit of having to cobble together your own legal protection rather than being married if you're just 'not keen' rather than vehemently opposed?

No inheritance tax between spouses.

Either of you could change these arrangements you have without the other knowing.

Instead of making all these legal documents and arrangements, you could tie it all up with one quick wedding ceremony. Doesn’t have to be fancy.

TBH putting all these things in place for you both as well probably cost far more in Solicitors fee than going through the actual marriage ceremony. And you are still not covered despite all that for all eventualities.

Slight tangent: I just wanted to recommend considering the pros/cons of including a common tragedy clause in the event of a car accident etc where both parents are killed.

For me it is the ease of sorting things out.

DP and I were in a similar situation, had everything you listed sorted, had little difference in salary and career prospects etc (and two children) but I finally decided I would rather be married because if the worst happened, it would just make things so much easier for us.

We had a statutory ceremony last week with two neighbours as witnesses and haven't really told anyone.

I've been "against" marriage for a long time and I will never refer to us as husband and wife, talk about our "marriage" etc, but sometimes you have to admit defeat and work with the legal system that currently exists in order to ensure everyone's protection.

A partner can change wills and pension beneficiary without you knowing.

No inheritance tax allowance.

Things change, you may not stay equal.

Moving money between spouses/iht/cgt
(Most effwctive the there are assets

Otherwise as others have said already

I actively don't want to be married either, OP. However it is more practical than any alternative- as the above posts show.

In your position I would consider a quiet or secret/private "wedding". Nothing else has to change- names, rings, etc. Just organise a registry office and book a morning/afternoon off work and go do the thing.

Alternatively if you're happy to wait for more legal protection you could wait and see if the civil partnership thing for heterosexual couples comes to anything. Could be a while though and could come to nothing

The big thing for me would be that your DP could change their will, pension etc and not tell you. Obviously they could do that if you were married too but as their spouse you would have much stronger grounds to appeal.

Why not just get married? You get all of those benefits without doing all of that paperwork. Probably costs less to go to a registry office, get married and be done with it, than to pay a solicitor to ensure all of that is legal and binding and that you'll not be fucked should one of you leave or die. Plus it's less time to just get married. You work out how much time you've spent doing all of that and the extras still to do, vs half an hour in a registry office.

Not much point doing it your way since it still isn't likely to work should a family remember who is related cause hassle. Or if one partner changes the documents without the other knowing.

I got married because of the next of kin issue. I was raised with my parents' dearest friend as a grandmother. She was never married, child free and we were incredibly close. We saw her several times a week. She and my parents supported each other through everything. When she became terminally ill, she made it clear to my mum that she wanted to die at home. My mum made all the arrangements on her behalf, providing as much care as she could herself and employing people my grandmother knew well for other times. Then her next of kin - a woman she saw for a duty visit every couple of years - got involved and had her put in a home. It was awful watching the light just go out of her as she just sat in a chair and waited to die. The home was miles away so her friends could barely visit her. Her relative never visited once. My mum could do nothing, despite my grandmother begging her to. She left everything to my mum, but that didn't matter. What mattered was feeling we'd failed her when she needed us most.

I'm never ever willingly going through that again.

You’d save a lot of money nervy and time because if you spent 10 minutes getting married, you wouldn’t have to do most of the stuff you’ve listed.

*You’d save a lot of energy and time...

We're in a very similar position OP. We're named as executor of each others' estates so presumably would be able to open Letters of Administration, and we get on with and trust each others' close family so no worries about being overruled or pushed out of decision making.

We don't have enough for inheritance tax to be an issue, but if we ever do we'll think again as that does seem to be the main inequality.

My partner's entire family have all been through at least one divorce each and he sees it bad luck, that if you get married you'll end up divorced. I think he's being a bit daft, but he's otherwise a very sensible, intelligent man who has unfortunately been greatly affected by disfunctional family in his childhood.

"no worries about being overruled or pushed out of decision making." Famous last words!

I have seen several instances of relatives turning downright nasty in the event of a bereavement. And the last people you'd expect to do so too.

Same is true for when couples separate - it's called estrangement for a reason - it's like they turn into a stranger before your eyes.

Ultimately the difference is that almost everything you have described can be changed/removed from you not only without your consent but without you even knowing! Potentially in the event of your partners death which is the very worst time for your family.

I've seen a relative lose the family home due to not being married to their partner and their being under the wrong impression it was all tied up legally. Basically her partners sister (who he wasn't even close to but was his last remaining adult blood relative) swooped in, successfully appealed the will and other agreements and took the lot!

Not only leaving the family in serious financial strife but dealing with more emotional trauma than was necessary.

Far cheaper, easier and more binding to nip down the registry office.

There was a thread on MN not so long ago about someone who couldn't even arrange to see the body of the person she loved after he died, nor have any dealings with the funeral directors as she wasn't next of kin.

His family had banned her from the funeral home and the funeral director has to abide by the wishes of the NOK. That alone for me would be enough to get married.

As pp have said, everything on his side can be changed without your knowledge.

Personally I can never understand the commitment of having a child with someone but marriage is a step too far.

There is no such thing as legal next of kin - its not a concept recognised in English Law.

That said, you are statistically a lot more likely to split up if you are not married, so if you are raising DCs, well worth bearing in mind that outcomes for children of separated parents are always worse than for those who remain in a relationship.

The single biggest benefit is confidence in your arrangements as nobody knows what the future holds.

His family had banned her from the funeral home and the funeral director has to abide by the wishes of the NOK

The funeral director chose to abide by the wishes of the people who were paying him.

There is no such thing as next of kin, its a shame your friend didn't realise this.

Thanks for all these replies.

I wrote a long reply but my phone lost it.

Basically we, especially I, feel very odd about a lot of the patriarchal stuff around marriage, I can't reconcile what sort of marriage ceremony would work for me so I put my head in the sand and avoid it all. DP would marry me if it were important to me, but he feels fairly similar to me that it's a piece of paper which doesn't mean much to him, and we've done a fairly good amount of legal stuff which covers the main bases and at least outlines our intentions, which felt really nice and a bit like our own secret marriage ceremony already weirdly?!

We've been together 15 years, know and love each others families, and whilst I'm not completely naive noone in his family has ever cheated (to my knowledge) or divorced, and I would and do trust him with my life. Even if something did happen to make us split I'm sure the sort of person he is he'd treat me fairly - that is what our own personal document was all about, laying out a sober level headed view of how we'd want things split. I can't know for sure, but every single thing I've seen of him over 15 years points to the same honourable decent person.

We probably will marry in the next few years, ideally when civil partnerships come in for heteros, otherwise once I get the courage to decide what sort of wedding would be acceptable for me and DP does likewise. I wouldn't want to elope or do it in secret, and I know our friends and family would love the excuse of a party and to celebrate our love with us.

Bit drunk at a childfree DP free party and should be sleeping rather than MNing.

Thanks for food for thought

"I'm sure the sort of person he is he'd treat me fairly" that's what I thought. I was wrong.

Fairly sure if you asked many of those dealing with separation divorce on the appropriate boards will say much the same. It's rare for there to be no animosity, no oneupmanship in the immediate aftermath of a split.

As for "its so patriarchal" EVERYTHING is - especially everything legal! You've made wills - patriarchal, sounds like you have a mortgage - patriarchal.

What will stop them being patriarchal is the use and execution of them, if you're going on history... Seriously EVERYTHING is.

I don’t think anyone seeks to marry someone they think would treat them unfairly, isn’t decent or is not honourable.

Your reasons for not marrying are heavily outweighed by the benefits.

There is no guarantee any lump sum on death from the pension fund would come to you. Also a survivor's pension would only be payable to a non-spouse if they were financially dependent on the deceased which, from your post, looks doubtful in your case.