Does it make sense to get married?

Dead_Eye_Jones

Marriage is the means by which society recognises a couples commitment to one another. If you are commited and intend to stay together through better and worse then I pose the simple question - why not get married? Why not be part of society? Its a normal thing to do but I guess many see themselves as being above 'normal' - even if it is good enough for most of us!

Marriage does not have to be expensive - so I dont except that! Im sure someone with experience can confirm but a registrar fee 1 or 2 hundred pound?

I guess if the institution of marriage means to you "a bit of paper" then I can understand why it seems pointless. But that is indeed the mistake - its not just a bit of paper.

Yep the above are right, there are legal implications that wont go away. The law has to be black and white so a couple is either married or not. The law wouldnt work any other way because how do you define a couple. If an unmarried couple splits, a dependant spouse could walk away with nothing even after years and years. This was recently reinforced in law thanks to a recent case.

I just think its sad that this part of our society is slowly fading away, especially when no one gives a good reason as to why not to get married. I wonder if the answer is because one partner or other isnt quite as commited as they claim, secretly hoping that one day they'll meet someone better? Of course no partner can admit that, so they call the old 'what difference does it make routine'. Of course I ask again, if it makes no difference, why not do it? Shying away from it would certainly make me wonder...

Anyway good luck to all, as many say above, we're all different and I respect individual decisions. But its nice to debate these things .

pooranddesperate

One of the major tax advantage of getting married is inheritance tax - I know its morbid thinking about these things, but if one half of married couple dies and passes everything to the other spouse, then this is completely exempt from IHT. If, however you are not married then anything owned over and above the threshold (which is currently £300,000) will be taxed at 40%.

The other thing that you might want to consider is what happens if you split up - its often actually much more difficult to sort out finances for couples who have cohabited rather than married - and if your assets/ income are unequal, then you may get a shock if you were to split up, as despite what many people think there really is no such thing as a common law husband and wife. God, I sound all doom and gloom don't i