Is getting married still worth it nowadays?

I love being married. My wife does everything while I lie around scratching myself. Can't recommend it enough.

Not if you're a man.

Getting married is in terms of tax,s merging your assets it has many tax benefits in the long term .as opposed to just living together as 2 single people.

Every society has the option of divorce if the relationship breaks down .

We were asked if we were married and when we said no we were just asked what Surname was to be put on the birthcert. And they registered that in the hospital documentation to be later rammified when the birth was officially registered. Since we are a three parent family, we decided all the kids would have my surname as the father. But we could have used their surnames or even double barrelled surnames. Not sure legally but I suspect we could have even invented a whole new never before seen surname.

So you got nothing, as I suspected.

Well yes you can have any opinion you like. That was why I was asking if there is any evidence for your tosh or was it just your opinion. If it's just your opinion as it appears to be (given your lack of anything supporting it) then that is absolutely fine with me. That's all I was asking. Have at it. My opinion is worth no less than yours either. It's only you not me putting value judgements on the opinions of others it seems.

What I wondered was if there is any reason to think your opinionated tosh about different types of commitment having different value or strengths of bond has any basis in reality. I certainly see no reason to think it does. Life Time commitments such as my own relationship are not something one needs to represent on a legal document to make it more real or stronger. It is a commitment that is made and re-made each and every single day and will continue to be made and re-made every day for the rest of my life.

Not formalising that on one particular legal document of YOUR choice seems in no way makes it "weaker" as you claim. Which is why as I said I was just wondering if this was merely your opinion (which as I said is fine!) or did you have any actual reality basis for it.

Care to cite those statistics and see what they are based on and what they normalise for? Especially given the relatively high number of divorces in our modern day society.

The issue with statistics is most of them are made up. Which is why a citation might be helpful.

But another reason - the "hey duh water is wet" reason - why statistically you are more likely to separate if you are not married is that people separate before they decide to get married. So it's bloody well obvious that statistics would show that. This says nothing about the "bond" people have in and out of marriage.

So it would be worth seeing your citation of statistics to see 1) what exactly you are referencing and 2) if it actually says what you think it says and 3) if they actually exist outside your head.

The issue with your imaginary statistic though is that you would merely be assuming that marriage is what gives the "bond" of which you speak rather than the other way around. The people who reach the point of deciding to marriage bringing an already existing commitment.

So while you might say "People who are married are more likely to stay together" it is just as likely that "People who are more likely to stay together are more likely to choose marriage". But the people who are going to stay together who choose NOT to marry (or like myself have no option to marry) do not therefore have a "weaker bond" as your fantastical opinion states.

Still nothing then.

Firstly anecdote is not evidence and the plural of anecdote is not statistics. So "I know lots of people who…" is useless, meaningless and empty. Not to mention you could be just making it up so we can not even validate your anecdotes either. You might in fact not know anyone at all and be a hermit. We simply do not / can not know.

Secondly however "I know lots of people who…." is a statement about you, not them. It would be a statement about the kind of people you socialise with or attract as social contacts. If I say "I know lots of people who listen to rap music" that would say nothing about the popularity of rap music. It would show that I personally move in cicles where rap music is common.

If for example you are a devout catholic then you would very likely know more people who marry than cohabitate.

So have you any actual stats to cite or is to be just opinion and anecdote?

So nothing then, as expected, just a cop out phrase. If you find anything do come back to me. If throw away cop out phrases is all you have then have at it:

This was an incredible response. Good job. I'm sorry it fell on the ego and ignorance of the recipient, but your arguments were the most solid of the whole thread.

On your first point in what circumstance could someone challenge an actual legal spouse in a case of medical care?

Channelling a 14 year old Tate fan here.

Well for example if the doctors thought that spouse was attempting to make medical decisions that were not in the best interest of the patient in question. Now there is next of kin which allows emergency medical decisions to be made by the nominated person which is automatically a spouse but that doesn't count in cases where there is a question of mental capacity such as dementia.

So in the case where someone has something like dementia & therefore the care isn't urgent but they may not have the mental capacity to make decisions, an advanced health directive is something that they have signed when they had mental capacity to nominate who they would like to make the decisions on their medical care should they not be able to.

And for power of attorney - well that covers all financial decisions etc which again doesn't automatically go to the spouse. Joint accounts would be different as the spouse already has access but decisions around other self owned financial interests cannot be made by the spouse for the person in question without an EPA being in place.

I've gone through the process with a parent with alzheimers, but there was no issue, it was automatically granted as we were the nearly legal relative.

I am still puzzled as to why you think being married is of no benefit in such situations. Medical practitioners have to maintain their legal obligations, regardless of the relationships of the patient.

Fair enough, my experience was before 2019.