Don't marry if you are a guy. At present, marriage is a contract with no upside for you. You gain nothing from marriage that you can't get from a committed non-marital relationship, and stand to lose a lot.
You can gain quite a lot. If you want a partner beside you to learn from and grow closer to, it can be a great thing. If you want children to love and raise and educate, marriage can be awesome. Those are two reasons I look forward to marriage when I meet the right woman.
If those aren't your priorities though, then I would agree, marriage probably isn't a good option for you. If you view marriage as "what you can get" rather than "what you can give/share" then it will not work and will result in unhappiness.
You can get all those things from a committed non-marital relationship.
Marriage (by which I mean the contract enforced by your state) adds nothing to the mix beyond a massive financial liability (for the man) if the relationship ends. Read this article for an example of the bad results of marriage:
I think you're still stuck with a financial liability if you decide to have kids with non person you aren't married to. Plus there are tax breaks for being married. But that is just monetary.
In reality most people in the US aren't as inclined to have life partners without the marriage part. And frankly, there is something special about professing your commitment to another person in front of your community that somehow makes your bond with your partner stronger.
Is marriage required? Probably not. But I think you are missing a good part of it by claiming financial reasons for despising marriage.
Tax breaks for being married? Quite the contrary. You pay additional taxes if you marry. Do the math for single vs married tax rates at various income levels. Also, if you file as married (jointly or separately) if one person itemizes the other must itemize, or vice versa w/ the standard deduction.
One gets big tax breaks for owing money to a bank for a mortgage loan or for having children, but not simply for being married. Hence the term "marriage penalty".
> You pay additional taxes if you marry. Do the math for single vs married tax rates at various income levels.
If you do the math you actually find that married folk pay less US federal income taxes in certain situations and more in others. (CA is the same - I don't know about other states) The result depends on the distribution of income between the two people
If both people make roughly the same amount of money, being married results in more taxes. If one person makes all the money, being married results in less taxes.
It turns out that a marriage differential (different taxes for married and unmarried couples) is a mathematical consequence of any tax system that has progressive marginal rates and treats a married couple's income as a lump sum.
That said, the marriage differential can be "married is always cheaper", "married is always more expensive", or "some times married is cheaper and some times it isn't" (as is the case with US and CA). It all depends on the various rates and deductions.
That's because you need two more things besides just a pre-nup: A POST-nup and $15k to the woman to go find her own lawyer to work through the paperwork so she can't claim ignorance. With that you are pretty safe.
As an aside, I know a guy who had his father own the deed to his house and paid "rent" to him. When the wife cheated on him and left/was kicked out she couldn't get much because most of his assets were in his dad's name.
Other than the possibility where that could be interpreted as not trusting your partner, that sounds like a great idea from a "CYA" perspective.
Of course, it could only really work if the relationship you have with your father is very solid. You wouldn't want him kicking you out of "your" house because of some arbitrary conflict.
Usually because they either poorly written and/or one party was coerced (or claims they were coerced). As with all contracts, you should get a decent lawyer. And your partner needs his/her own lawyer.
Marriage is a way of saying "My intention is to spend the rest of my life with you as my partner." That means something to your partner. If you're not willing to say that, then that means something, too.
That's an interesting perspective. What you're saying is that marriage is a mode of communication for that one sentiment. Are there other modes of communicating the same sentiment? (an epic poem, breaking into heartfelt song, getting tattoos,...) Are they all equivalent? Does choosing to not express it by marriage necessarily imply that one is not willing to express it at all?
It doesn't just communicate it to your partner, but to society. Getting married is a ritualized promise that is done before one's community of family and friends. I think saying the vows to your partner, in front of your family and friends, is markedly different than, say, writing a poem and getting tattoos.
I suppose marriage is what you make of it. I consider being married to be a different state than not being married. I don't see any state change happening from writing a poem. But there is one with getting tattoos.
Whether or not you get married in the eyes of the state or a church I don't think is important. But I do think that promise is important, and it is further weighted if done publicly.
I can dig that. I've been through the process myself. In the beginning, my thoughts on the matter were perfectly in line with yours.
Now that I'm on the other side, I've seen that neither the church, nor the state, nor the social network of community witnesses (nor the legal commitment of having adopted her two sons for that matter) could stand in the way of her caprice-driven dalliances.
And, living in a "No Fault Divorce" state meant that her violation of the terms of the marriage provided me no benefit or protection when it came time to kick her to the curb out of self-preservation.
Society, with all its witnessing, was nowhere to be found. Everybody wants to come to the wedding. Nobody wants to come to the divorce.
In all seriousness, if you don't want children, what is the purpose of marriage? What little I know about divorces and children suggests that marriage functions as a crude insurance policy for the kids - which seems reasonable. But if you just want to live with somebody, other than perhaps being able to do some small tax optimization and handle stuff like medical decisions if your spouse is unconscious, what's the point?
It used to be that marriage was a contract between you, your intended spouse, and God.
Now, it is a contract between you, your intended spouse, and "The State". And therefore when you marry you are giving the State some measure of control over your life.
Last friday I had to stand in front of a judge and say that two people where not living together for the last year so they could get a divorce in the state of Virginia. After 6 months of marriage it took a year, a judge, an attorney, and a witness, plus some cash to finally separate them.
If they had been married for 10 years then there would be Social Security implications etc. Plus I think they still force you to take a blood test ect.
Then why should the state care if they lived together?
It's one thing to have both people say we agree to split property like this it's another to say you have to wait and jump though a lot of hoops to get divorced.
Consider two people that want a divorce, but can't really afford separate households at this point and don't want to sell the house when the economy is bad. Granted this is not the "normal" path but plenty of people get divorced without hating each other.
I would be very surprised if the rule, in some states, of being apart for a year to finalize a divorce, has anything to do with religion/church. Most likely, it is a relic of legislation attempting to define "litmus tests" on which the judiciary can make decisions.
Keep in mind that with things like divorce and child custody/support, couples change their minds (sometimes a lot). Our court systems can't handle this (certainly not the costs). Over the years, our societies have required legislatures to define rules and processes for lumping everyone into a process. I don't think the state really wants to be involved in divorce cases, but there are reasons they are (property, debts, retirement benefits, child custody/support, etc).
Like it or not, state courts have to be involved in divorces. For some couples that can handle it without the courts, well, like education, they get dragged down into the mean.
Uh, you are aware of the concept of a pre-nup, right?
I'm pretty sure a marriage + a solid pre-nuptial agreement would put you on much better legal/financial ground than a "committed non-martial relationship" without a written contract.
apparently prenups are pretty much worthless in this day and age. Even if its air tight, the other lawyer can just say that they were forced to sign the prenup(i.e. no prenup = no marriage) and poof, your air tight prenup is null and void
It's pretty simple: both you and your spouse-to-be need a lawyer to review the document before signing it. Then nobody can claim they were forced or didn't understand.
And, really, this is pretty basic legal advice. You should always have an independent, disinterested lawyer review contracts before you sign them.
How many women out there want to raise kids out of wedlock? Probably not many, and the same is probably true of most men. Or are you assuming that men don't want to have families?
I think that what women want is to raise a child with a partner. Neither a wedding nor a state-enforced contract is required for a committed, long-term, loving relationship.
There is an increasing phenomenon of women choosing to give birth out of wedlock. It's not yet clear if they are having children without a cohabitant partner.
>I think that what women want is to raise a child with a partner.
I really think you're being unrealistic if you think women don't care about getting married before having children with someone. You can place whatever value judgments you like on the reasons for that, but to say it isn't the case isn't realistic.
