Marriage in middle age - why?

[Thatsnotallgood]

If you remarried in your 50s and 60s can I ask why?

inspired by may recent threads talking about marriages that happen at a life stage when there is no likelihood of children together. In particular questions around inheritance etc.

I ask because I’ve been with my DP for 12 years and we still live apart and keep our finances completely separate. When we first met I assumed that I might want us to marry at some point but the more time goes on, the less inclined I feel.

i could imagine living together with all the legalities nailed down. Am I missing something about the reason for marrying in middle age?

I think it’s easier if one of you dies op.
Or because people love each other?

If you're not combining assets probably no point. If you have a lot of assets, marriage shortcuts a fuck load of paperwork.
Ever the romantic, me!

Plus your spouse gets your inheritance tax allowance when you die.

The only reason I can think of is inheritance tax. Your spouse inherits tax free, and then has £640,000 tax free allowance for their benefactors.

Or marrying for money/lifestyle - always risky.

I have a child so marrying for any reason would mean disinheriting my child, and therefore not something I would ever consider.

I’ll never remarry unless he’s massively richer than me, lol

I married at 55. We still live apart by choice. We chose to due to wills, pensions etc

Because my first marriage wasn’t right, and my second will be to the love of my life.

with apologies for the drip feed, I should have said that both DP and I were widowed previously so both inherited our late spouses’ allowance. I’m guessing you can’t double up on that!

Aw 😊

Pensions and IHT. No other reason.

Not 50s/60s, but I remarried at 44 (he was 57).
I hadn't planned to remarry, and had said no to him several times, as I just didn't see the point.
And then, suddenly, I wanted to be married to him - so I asked him and he said yes.
It was totally an emotional thing, no logic at all.

As it happens, by the time we married 5 months later he'd been diagnosed with cancer and had less than a year to live - but we had no idea about that when we made the arrangements.

I've been with my now DP for 8 years, recently moved in together. I'm pretty sure I won't marry again, but then I've said that before!

My assets will be left to my children (from my 1st marriage) so IHT not relevant with regard to DP.

Why do you live like that? What’s the point of marriage if it’s all separate?

Two good reasons:

Inheritance tax spousal exemption

and/or

Love

I often wonder this. Don’t understand people who marry later in life at all 😆

Because I love him and he loves me and wants to marry me.

Never saw the point in marriage and still don't.

We live together, it's for financial safety re inheritence tax and home ownership after one of us dies, so that the other doesn't have to move. After making the wise decision, we also then started to feel quite sweet about it.

Me too.
Together 14 years though. I had never been married before and obviously you only live once.

I had two amazing love affairs previously that didn’t end with marriage, I also had several boyfriends and been single for years in between.
Why not marriage?

Or if you're like my MIL, you just can't not get married. Think it's her 5th marriage now? Kept it quieter this time, didn't even tell her son (my DH)....she is such a snobby cow (with more money than sense), she looks down on everybody but it turns out she's just a needy old slag. Sorry, not sorry.

Commitment. You’re saying this is one you are with.

Obviously people who live together and share finances can also be equally committed.

I just like the idea of husband and wife.

Generally I assume its tax/hmrc related.
You can leave £1 million tax free to a spouse.

When DH and I got together, it was second time around for both of us. When we first met, we lived in different houses and spent the odd night here or there together to make sure it was right for both of us, and also not to upset our DC. Eventually, we decided we wanted to be together so we got married and DH sold his house so we could pay for improvements to my house, which is now our house. (I never lived here with ex - DH said he didn’t know if he could have moved in had it been the firmer marital home.). But we love each other and we wanted to make our life together - when we got married, DH was 59 and I was 55. He had to pay for my DC at university, because when we married they lost a grant from the LA, but he was happy to do this so they were not out of pocket. I am now late sixties and he’s in his seventies, and I’m very happy to be married.

Religious reasons sometimes. People who don’t feel comfortable cohabiting.

Obviously financial and tax reasons as already discussed.

Some people enjoy the thought of a wedding and a big party with all their close people, and fair play to them, it’s not a stupid reason.

“Love” - I don’t really get this one. You can cohabit and be madly in love. You can love people other than your romantic OH. You can be married and not in love.

These responses are really interesting and it’s lovely hearing the stories from those of you who have happily married in your 50s and 60s.

For me, I agree that love on its own isn’t enough. I’m too long in the tooth (and read too many MN threads) to risk my financial security for love alone. I completely get the points on IHT and pensions though.

@sesquipedalian i can understand your DH’s point re your formal marital home. I think if DP and I moved in together I’d want to start afresh. I’d want to make lots of changes to his house but - very hypocritically - wouldn’t be happy if he tried to do the same to mine!

It causes other problems if you have children from previous relationships though - very often one partner's children end up effectively partially or fully disinherited (everything goes to spouse and then spouse's children) unless the paperwork regarding wills was done properly and without rose tinted expectations of spouse doing the right thing by the first to die anyway.