what are the legal and financial benefits to being married.

2lazytogetup

McGinniesta wrote: »

Marriage is a glorified business contract and tax arrangement.

Little more.

an expensive cliched day out too

KaneToad

dxhound2005 wrote: »

And one thing which is absent from marriage legislation is any mention of romantic love.

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2015/act/35/enacted/en/html

It's absent from many marriages too.

2lazytogetup

2lazytogetup wrote: »

an expensive cliched day out too

....only if you make it that way.
Plenty of people do the registry office version - you don't need to have any more that two witnesses. You don't even need to have a drink or dinner after.

Hodors Appletart

Marriage is VERY important for men with children in this country

Married fathers are treated like garbage at the best of times by the courts, it's a hundred, thousand times worse for unmarried fathers.

2lazytogetup

ffs do the honourable thing and get down on one knee.

eviltwin

We only got married for financial reasons. If the cohabiting couples had the same protection as the married we wouldn’t have bothered. For us the main reason was next of kin - I do not want my family having any say in my life - and inheritance tax on our home. I’ve seen a person I know fleeced with tax just because she didn’t have that legal protection. It’s important to protect yourself

eviltwin

2lazytogetup wrote: »

an expensive cliched day out too

My entire wedding cost less that 1000 euros. It doesn’t cost that much to do the legal bit.

as a truple rather than a couple we can not get married really - at least not entirely.

We did worry for awhile what we might miss out on there other than tax credits which arent that relevant to us anyway.

Mostly next of kin rights for things like medical proxy was our main concern. And then parentship of the kids should one of us die. Since I have children with both of them - if two of us were to die then we were concerned about how the remaining mother would be treated differently between her biological children and her nonbiological children.

Inheritance rights too.

Most things we have worked out legal substitutes for with our lawyers over various documents and wills and statements and the like. Whether everything is legally sound of might be dubious if challenged is I guess something we hope never to find out. But we have done what we can.

Peregrinus

The whole point of marriage is to seek societal, legal, administrative, etc recognition for a committed, mutually interdependent conjugal relationship which would otherwise be nothing but the private business of the two people concerned. By marrying, they make it everyone's business and other people are affected by it - e.g. other taxpayers are affected by the tax breaks you get, other family members are affected by your inheritance rights which displace theirs, landlords and other potential renters are affected by your right to suceed to your spouse's tenancy, etc, etc. The theory is that you can choose to seek this recognition or not to seek it and keep your relationship purely private. The downside to not seeking it, of course, is that you don't get it.

That's the theory. In practice this theory has been somewhat eroded by modern legislative developments which tend to assimilate the treatment of non-marital couples to the treatment of married couples. This isn't completely the case, but it's much more the case than it used to be. So for example if a non-marital couple breaks up, the courts may have the same power to make orders reallocating their home, assets, income etc as they would if the couple were married. They are treated in this context as married, even though they may have very deliberately chosen not to marry precisely because they - or one of them - didn't want this treatment.

Traditionally, there was a general societal expectation that a couple in a committed conjugal relationship would marry. Religious considerations aside, this was seen as the proper and responsible thing to do, because it would attract treatment that was seen as appropriate to their situation. Not marrying was transgressive - you were rejecting the supports and protections that society was offering you, and you were running real risks of hardship if, e.g., one member of the couple died and the other had no inheritance rights. This mattered a great deal when economic resources and opportunities were even more skewed by gender than they currently are. In general, if a couple cohabited without marrying the man was seen as exploitative and selfish and the woman as foolish and lacking self-esteem.

Cohabitation is much more socially acceptable nowadays. I think this is partly due to the decline in the strength of religious norms, but also to the increased economic equality of the sexes. Quite simply, women have much greater economic resources (as in, ability to earn a reasonably adequate living for themselves) than used to be case. But - as this thread shows - there are still risks to not being married in terms of tax liabilities, inheritance rights, next-of-kin status when it comes to care decisions, etc, etc. Some of these have been ameliorated by the trend already referred to of treating unmarried couples as if they were married; some remain.

You could argue that all differences should be abolished, and that cohabiting couples should in every respect be treated in the same way as as married couples. And maybe they should. But what that would do, in substance, is remove from people the right to remain unmarried. You'd effectively be saying that legally, administratively, etc, you marry simply by the fact of cohabiting, rather than by choosing to marry; you'd no longer have any right to cohabit and not be married. It wouldn't be a status you chose, but a status imposed on you by society because society thinks that people who cohabit should be treated that way.

And so, ironically, we'd have come full circle. Society's views, and not the couple's wishes or choice, would determine their legal status.

1874

The advantages are

Some limited taxation benefit in terms of allocation of tax credits, but that is only of benefit if one person does not work or earns significantly less than the other.
Inheritance rights

and
right of guardianship I believe, I would not want anyone else having a say over my childs life. Although, I am not sure, but I think I could maintain that and state I am a childs father and not have my rights lessened by not being married??

(edit and hypothetical interjection) If I was not married but was on my childs birth cert as the father, would my rights (or any fathers rights) be lessened if the mother of the child then married someone else? does that person now gain guardianship??
I'm not in that situation because I am married, at times I don't know if I'm better off or worse off being married.



The disadvantages are

in a cohabiting relationship where you are married, well, there are many
but they are applicable if you are simply cohabitating anyway with none of the benefits.


Always thought rights of cohabitating couples should be equal for inheritance and tax to married couples, but I didnt really view it as taking rights away from a person wanting to remain unmarried.
IMO, a cohabitating couple should be able make a statement they are cohabitating (civil partnership?) for tax and inheritence purposes that isn't equal to marriage but that doesnt put them at a disadvantage for certain tax purposes, because the obligations still exist for cohabitating couples anyway, after 2 and 5 years, so why shouldn't the rights?
I think that it would be better to define different types of cohabitation, someone could be living with their girlfriend/boyfriend where one person owns the property, I dont agree that the other person should automatically gains rights to the proeprty just because they reside together in a longterm relationship. If they have children it should be very advantageous for them to make a statement of their cohabitation for tax/inheritance purposes to protect their partner/child essentially from a cash grab by the state tax collectors. So maybe there should be varying degrees of benefit, but not all or nothing.




IMO the application of certain advantages and certain disadvantages (ie tax/inheritance,essentially tax and anything else) to being married vs any other scenario is simply to persuade people to get married as the state incurs less responsibility and obligations.

dxhound2005

Peregrinus wrote: »

That's the theory. In practice this theory has been somewhat eroded by modern legislative developments which tend to assimilate the treatment of non-marital couples to the treatment of married couples. This isn't completely the case, but it's much more the case than it used to be. So for example if a non-marital couple breaks up, the courts may have the same power to make orders reallocating their home, assets, income etc as they would if the couple were married. They are treated in this context as married, even though they may have very deliberately chosen not to marry precisely because they - or one of them - didn't want this treatment.

There is particular legislation, not some sort of slide into making everyone equal. It does require a certain commitment by couples, five years or two years if there are children to earn certain "rights". An important thing which is mentioned in this link is wills. Even after a long term, someone could exclude the other party from their will, and it would have to go to law. Makes life a lot more complicated.

https://www.lawsociety.ie/News/Media/Press-Releases/how-the-law-societys-legal-guides-can-help-you/

riclad

It's a lot simpler to get married to reduce inheritance taxs when one person pass, s away. Yes I understand there's not much social pressure for people to get married
anymore

Hodors Appletart

Hodors Appletart wrote: »

Marriage is VERY important for men with children in this country

Married fathers are treated like garbage at the best of times by the courts, it's a hundred, thousand times worse for unmarried fathers.

I'm unmarried, I'm a father. I have never wanted to marry, but am doing it because of the views of my fiancee.

You're right in a way, that unmarried men have no automatic rights to guardianship. That must be addressed. In practice, it's not a problem.

I hate this term 'deadbeat dad', but it probably captures how bad things would need to get before a father would be excluded from child-rearing.

riclad wrote: »

It's a lot simpler to get married to reduce inheritance taxs when one person pass, s away.

My parents never married, they were 'common-law spouses', which has no meaning according to the tax code. There was no issue with capital gains because they did the same thing that every married couple does -- passed property in shares to the children.

Admittedly. this is not an option if there are only 1 or 2 children.