Partner says he doesn’t believe in marraige

[Mumof42021]

I just wanted some views on this. So I have been with my partner for over 4 years. We have a child, recently bought a house and are very happy. I have always thought our next step would be marraige. It’s come up in conversation before as something we’d probably do at some point but was in no rush and wasn’t a big deal. But I recently mentioned it again just as our life is now stress free, we’re settled in our new home and our daughter has turned 2 so life’s a bit easier now days. I was really shocked when I said he doesn’t really believe in marraige. He doesn’t see the point in someone telling us how we feel about one another, how we need to declare our relationship to the government and with divorce rates so high he didn’t see the point. He said he loves me, he’s fully committed so didn’t need paper or anyone else to tell him how he feels. I said it would mean a lot to me. So I suggested that just me and him went to a registry office, made it official without the glam or a proper wedding. He said if I wanted to he would do that but said not cos he wanted to or cos it would make him happy or mean anything. It’s just for me. Now although he’s compromised I suppose his words have completely ruined the idea for me. I feel like I’m forcing him. So now I’m stuck. Do I go and make it official knowing he doesn’t want to or do I try and get over my real want for marraige. The idea of never becoming his wife breaks my heart, almost like I’m not good enough. I really don’t know what to do

This happened to a friend of mine whose partner died. He lost a huge amount of money. When he met someone else years later he married her because he didn't want it to happen again.

@RantyAnty You either didn't understand what I wrote, or you understood it but are replying in bad faith.

I did NOT say that most women do that.

I simply said that those cases exist, and that it makes sense that some men may be put off by that.

Simplifying a bit, in the UK, unlike in other jurisdictions, the financial settlements are not affected much by whether a spouse cheated or did some other despicable stuff. E.g. see https://www.blbsolicitors.co.uk/blog/will-my-spouse-get-half-of-everything-if-they-cheated-on-me/

When I got married, my wife and I both had nothing, and the wealth we have created we have created it together.

But I understand that people in different circumstances may well think long and hard about it. E.g. for someone marrying later in life and/or considering marrying someone with much less wealth than them, it is not unreasonable that that would be a consideration.

If you were a millionaire and married a man who's much less rich than you, how would you feel about him getting the same financial settlement (ie the same share of your assets) if he cheats on you than if you just fall out but with no infidelity?

Yeah if they've had a kid with you and marriage hasn't been planned for before or as soon after as possible, it's usually because they don't want to marry you.

I think he's a bastard personally. I'd lose all respect for him.

I'd still marry him though. For the security fir me amd baby. And in a few years I'd drop him like the trash he is.

I couldn't imagine having someone's child only for them to have the cheek to tell me marriage is just a piece of paper. Asshole.

We really do let them away with far too much.

Well, because it is. Its fine saying you don't want to get married becsuse she will take half your pension, but then men who dont want to get married need to either not have children or take on half of the financial burden in terms of childrearing, including leaving early from work to fo school pick ups etc, compressed hours, part time working etc. Otherwise a woman is at a huge financial disadvantage if the relationship breaks up and they end up homeless with no job, or their partner dies and they get evicted. Live in partnerships are also about 5x more likely tobend before a child is 5 than married partnerships, so it is also about commitment.

Absolutely! It's fine not to get married. But if you want children, you either have to be prepared to marry or to do whatever it takes to make sure your partner isn't left vulnerable or worse off than you as a result of the child.

Personally, I'd say to get yourself a vasectomy and take no chances.

I think that OP has left the building 🤷‍♀️

Does the op own half the house?

Or is this another, oh it made sense for it to only be in his name, I'm not on the deeds script

Mansplaining hell. Where's the eyes glazing over emoji when you need one?

I agree, we eloped just the 2 of us, nothing at all flashy. Had a picnic afterwards. Now we are legal spouses and that gives us both protections in the case of illness and death. We want it on the historical record that we made a legal declaration of our commitment to one another.

Because the woman is the one who has the babies, sacrifices much, but the man doesn't.

I guess my husband didn't get that particular memo then.

He's got a child and home with you already now. Why would he marry with the incentives gone?

And please don't be naive enough to say love....

@RantyAnty ??? Are accusations of mansplaining a get out of jail card when you see your arguments demolished and you refuse to answer??

Had a woman told you the same, what would you have accused her of??

Why don't we go through the points and the facts one by one?

Do you deny that, in the UK, unlike in other countries, divorce financial settlements are not affected much by whether someone cheated? Yes or no?

Do you or do you not see how this can put some people off?
I have spoken to Americans who entered into bomb-proof prenups which give much less to the other party if the other party cheated, and who were advised this would be impossible in the UK.

"If you were a millionaire and married a man who's much less rich than you, how would you feel about him getting the same financial settlement (ie the same share of your assets) if he cheats on you than if you just fall out but with no infidelity?"

Why did you dodge this question? Why did you not answer it?

If you had a son or daughter with significant assets and who wanted to marry someone less rich than them, would you not make this point with them?

No go on, do tell me how I am mansplaining, the patriarchy the oppression etc.

That is certainly true, but is only part of the story. The rest of the story is that this is a forum mostly by women for women, so many (not all) tend to apply double standards and treat a matter differently depending on whether it involves a man or a woman.

You see it in most threads on infidelity, sex, etc.

If he wants more sex, he's a sex pest and she should dump him.
If she wants more sex, he's ignoring her needs etc.

If he cheated, he's a bastard.
If she cheated, we shouldn't rush to judge because who knows what he has done, etc.

This (that double standards are applied here) may be an unpopular opinion, but unpopular doesn't mean false.

@NotASexBomb Divorce courts (in E&W at least) look at financial needs. So if a woman marries a millionaire, has no children with him, and hasn’t helped facilitate his millions, then (extenuating circumstances aside such as disability) the courts wouldn’t be looking to split assets 50/50. In a long marriage if the financially weaker party can be rehoused satisfactorily for less than 50% then that’s what they’ll get if it’s demonstrated they didn’t contribute to the generation of the financially stronger party’s assets. In a short (<5yr) marriage the default is each party leaves with what they brought into the marriage.

@ShakeNvacStevens But the fact remains that, in England and Wales, whether a spouse cheated has little to no effect on the divorce financial settlement. And pre-nups are legal but are only one of the factors taken into account by the courts, they are not as binding and bomb-proof as in some US states.

If I think of the people I know:

• One man lost a lot of money in a divorce which was not his fault (the wife cheated then asked for a divorce). After the divorce, the wife made a killing and afforded a lifestyle she could not have afforded otherwise. One might be tempted to say that was actually an incentive in asking for the divorce.
• Another person ended his relationship because he didn't want to marry her. Both in their 50s, she already had kids, he didn't, he was much wealthier than her. After extensive legal consultations, the advice was that the kind of outcome he would have wanted (i.e. limit the amount she would have got in a divorce) was easy to get in some US states but not in England, where it would have been a bit of a lottery.

I don’t dispute the fact that cheating isn’t considered during financial settlements in divorce. Nor is lying, refusing to pull your weight around the house, sulking, excessive drinking, gambling (unless very extreme), unexpectedly staying out all night without bothering to let your spouse know you’re safe, withholding affection - any other number of ways in which a person can destroy their relationship. Or simply just falling out of love. Why should cheating be the only broken marriage vow to have an impact on financials?

Wrt your example of the cheated-on man, I have witnessed first-hand many more occasions of “man runs off with younger woman” leaving his wife with a much-reduced lifestyle than before. Of course there are also plenty of tales of men feeling resentful that their ex-wife took them to the cleaners but scratch beneath the surface and it nearly always seems to be the case that the woman’s been a SAHM or contributed in some other way. When I got divorced from my exH of 17 years he and I amicably agreed how to split our finances but we had some back and forth with the courts as they wanted to be sure our assets were being split fairly - deffo no unearned windfalls coming anyone’s way!

@ShakeNvacStevens I think I must have been unclear.

I was NOT trying to say if it is more often the fault of the man or the woman.

I was simply saying that, unlike in other jurisdictions, in England the pre-nups are not fully binding (the risk of the courts deciding something different is much higher than elsewhere), and the financial settlement does not change much if one party cheated or did something despicable.

Why is this important? Because someone with more assets than their partner might think: wait a second, the English legal system basically gives my partner an incentive to divorce me and take a significant share of my assets. Something's not quite right! Note that this applies regardless of gender.

For couples who build their wealth together it's one thing, especially if it's the woman who sacrifices her career more to allow his to flourish.

But for couples who start with significantly different assets and/or don't have children together (as would have been the case for the couple in their 50s I mentioned) it's different.

It doesn't matter how many cases you have witnessed where you scratch beneath the surface and it's also or mostly the man's fault.

It doesn't matter whether it's the man's fault in 20% or 50% or 80% of the cases.

What matters is that the English legal system gives the other party an incentive to divorce just to get a significant share of the assets.
This risk can be reduced greatly in other jurisdictions, but not so in England.
And this puts some people off.

Loophole Larry type of gaslighting doesn't work on me either.

The nillionaire scenario is laughable too. It's always the brokest who trot this nonsense out too

Did you get banned from Reddit or something so you come hang around here?

@RantyAnty ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I calmly make the point that the English legal system gives a much stronger incentive than other jurisdictions to end a marriage just to end up with a significant % of the other party's assets.

This is a fact, there isn't much to dispute. You may not like this fact, it may trigger strong feelings, but facts have a tendency not to care about your feelings.

I also clarify that I mean couples who start with significantly different assets and/or careers and earning potentials, NOT couples who started in a similar place but she sacrificed more of her career for the sake of the family.

And your reaction? First you accuse me of mansplaining; then you go on a deranged rant accusing me of being a gaslighting loophole Henry.

Some people are unbelievable. The bully accusing their victims!!! It beggars belief...

If you are taking it out on me because of problems in your life, I truly hope you sort them out.
Otherwise you are just a truly despicable individual.

Goodbye.

PS Millionaire are not that rare. It is not impossible for someone >50 (which was one of my examples), who has had a good job and no kids, to be a millionaire just think of no student loan + property prices in these decades.

Book the registry office and go asap. He’s exactly right - it is just a bit of paper, but that bit of paper is a legal contract that effectively sets out your rights and responsibilities within a marriage. The puffy dress, extravagant flowers, and luxury cars are nice but irrelevant. At the end of the day marriage is a legal contract, and if you have a business, children, mortgages, pensions, and everything in between then get married to protect yourself and your family. My guess is that he’ll bottle it - he doesn’t want to marry you. In that case you have a different conversation.

I calmly make the point that the English legal system gives a much stronger incentive than other jurisdictions to end a marriage just to end up with a significant % of the other party's assets

Everyone's standard of living declines significantly on divorce, because the same sum of money goes a lot less far in funding two households than one. But the financially weaker party generally has the steeper decline and the lesser opportunity to ever make it up. The principal financial incentive, in a marriage where there is a significant income or asset disparity, is to stay married.

@DreadPirateRobots That's not the point. If we are married and you are richer than me I will be financially better off if we remain married - true almost always.

BUT if I end the marriage in England, including through no fault of yours (which could range from simply falling out of love to me being a true cheating tw** ), in England I am much more likely than in other jurisdictions to end up with a significant part of your assets, i.e. better off than had I never married.

This can be an incentive towards ending the marriage.
In fact, a dishonest person who wanted to swindle a richer spouse will find this much easier to do in England than in other countries.

This puts some people off.

It's quite factual - it puzzles me what there is to debate.

Again, I am not saying whether it's more often the fault of the man or the woman.
I am simply saying that this puts some people off.

If you earn 2x me, and had already inherited 2 properties, would you not feel more comfortable marrying in a jurisdiction where prenups are fully-binding and bombproof, and where, if the marriage ends, especially if it's my fault, I'm much less likely to end up with a significant part of your assets?

What's all that got to do with the price of fish? You're in the marital laws jurisdiction you're in, and very, very few people have anything like the amount of assets to make a prenup even vaguely meaningful. Marriage means going all in with someone else, especially if you have any intent of children together. If you're going to do it, you need to accept that you'll have to learn to share, and not act like you can just run home with all your toys if you don't like the game any more.

@DreadPirateRobots I got married without a prenup. My wife and I had nothing and whatever little wealth we have now we have created together.

"It has to do with fish" because it explains why some people are put off.

I have zero interest in convincing anyone of anything - I was just trying to explain why some people are put off by the English legal system, not by marriage in general, and why they'd marry if they lived elsewhere but not here.

It doesn't apply to you? OK.
It applies to you but you're not put off? Also great - whatever works for you.
But it applies to some people who are put off, that's all.