benefits of being married vs living together

bluestaff

I lost my partner of 27years 5 weeks ago and can say from personal experience you are not entitled to certain benefits, also going through trying to sort out his pension.
We always mentioned getting married but never got round to it, we were discussing writing wills and sorting out paperwork, trouble is you always think you've got another day / week /year don't hold off sort things out soon as possible. It's hard enough trying to come to term with the lost of your soulmate without the added stress . Soon as you say your not married most don't want yo know. Sue

Gloomendoom

bluestaff wrote: »

I lost my partner of 27years 5 weeks ago and can say from personal experience you are not entitled to certain benefits, also going through trying to sort out his pension.
We always mentioned getting married but never got round to it, we were discussing writing wills and sorting out paperwork, trouble is you always think you've got another day / week /year don't hold off sort things out soon as possible. It's hard enough trying to come to term with the lost of your soulmate without the added stress . Soon as you say your not married most don't want yo know. Sue

Sorry for your loss.

Sad to say, I've seen too many posts like this on this board.

Tabbytabitha

libra10 wrote: »

No-one has mentioned the downside of marriage. If things go wrong, it's much more difficult and costly to split up and divorce.


Good luck with your decision.

Is that a downside or another advantage?

libra10

Tabbytabitha wrote: »

Is that a downside or another advantage?

Considering the high numbers of marital breakdowns and divorce, I wouldn't call it an advantage!

Gloomendoom

libra10 wrote: »

Considering the high numbers of marital breakdowns and divorce, I wouldn't call it an advantage!

You might if your partner dumped you penniless and refused to let you see your children.

libra10

It just goes to show that you need to consider all options, and take a sensible, long term approach to the decision whether to marry or not, exactly as the OP is doing.

Flugelhorn

Brighton_belle wrote: »

It's a good idea for everyone to have PofA done , married or not. But they are actually much more expensive than the two of you just getting married in a registry office without frills.
But PofA's do give your nominated person more powers to sort your affairs if you are incapacitated than being married does.

4 POAs would be £340 and probably far simpler than trying to get things managed if incapacitated even if married

zagfles

p00hsticks wrote: »

We've just done it - it cost around £150 in total (around £70 for the two of us to give the required notice / proof of id, and £80 for the actual ceremony and certificate). The meeting to give notice took about an hour, the ceremony five minutes!

We'd been living together happily for 25+ years but were prompted to marry as we are approaching retirement age and realised that we would only get dependants pensions from each others defined benefit pensions if we were married. Nowadays, if you are lucky enough to get a DB pension I think some of them - such as the Civil Service - allow you to specify that you have a long term partner.

Apart from that, we've never come across a reason to be married. Although I think I might have felt differently if we'd had children.

Some do but still won't necessarily give the same rights to the pension as a spouse. For instance with mine, the 50% spouse pension is automatic, but the pension to a nominated partner/dependant is only paid if they are "financially dependant" on you.

zagfles

NewHome13 wrote: »

Thanks to everyone for their replies so far.

I am getting the impression that if we choose not to marry there is a lot of additional paperwork to sort out to have at least vaguely similar rights. And we would mainly be impacted should something horrible happen to one of us (i.e Widowed Parent's Allowance / Bereavement Payments).

While at the moment we would not be eligible for the Income Tax Marriage Allowance, this could change in the future I suppose. I am a little confused about the Inheritance Tax issue. I don't expect that we are going to become particularly wealthy, but would I be right in thinking that individually we have a threshold of £325,000. If we marry we have a joint threshold of £750,000. If one of us were to die, the other would retain the joint threshold of £750,000?

Yes, bascially, you can pass on any unused IHT allowance to your spouse, plus anything you inherit from your spouse doesn't count. But 2*325k = £650k.

The other thing is, if you need to go through probate, you will need to fill in the IHT forms even if you're nowhere near the threshold. If you're unmarried this means needing to declare gifts between partners, and it means having to declare how much you each contributed to any jointly owned assets, which for a lot of couple could be a complete nightmare depending how they manage finances.

For instance if one partner transfers to the other to get tax free interest, use their ISA allowance etc, this sort of thing would count as gifts and need to be declared. If you buy a car using your partner's savings, probably similar. If you buy a house in joint names, you'd have to record how much each partner contributed towards it.

DigForVictory

One merit of matrimony is that you fit into an awful lot of systems without extra hoops. All around the world.
(Truly, the Americans have some very strange ideas about what women may or may not do, without their responsible male's OK - yes Saudi may be worse but I'd keep Texas on the just-day-trip list.)

From anyone trying to complete a form that was originally drafted over 10 years ago, (or contemplated, or just badly designed last week), if you can tick the married box, you don't need a panel of arbitration but can just flow through the system.

I walked into matrimony out of choice & find a cousin who didn't needs my help with system issues more than others. She's still a very human being, she doesn't fit easily into some systems.

Many years ago, colleagues who'd been cheerfully and quietly "living in sin" slipped into a registry office one lunchtime for the sole reason it gave them a higher pension. Which they started to collect about 4 months later. They gleefully chortled over being paid to be married - you may never find that particular slipper fits but I'd commend the institution.