What does marriage mean these days?

sarcal3813

So myself and my partner have been together almost 11 years, we have a house, two children together (and my two sons live with us) and are very happy. 

My question is, although both of us have wills stating what we’d like to happen in the event of our passing… Is there any benefit to being married? Neither of us are bothered about marriage, so if there was benefit to it, we’d literally go to a registry office and sign the paperwork. 

Savvy_Sue

The big advantage is in avoiding Inheritance Tax on the first death: nothing is due on anything left to a spouse or civil partner.

RAS

Huge advantages regarding IHT allowances. Best bit of IHT planning you can do is marry or arrange civil partnership.

And do check out your pension situations, some providers do offer survivor's pensions or payments to partners, others will only offer them to spouses and civil partners.

bryanb

It also means a lot if you divorce

Keep_pedalling

If either of you have assets over £325k (including your share of the house) then you are going to be with an IHT liability on the first death which could leave your partner in financial difficulty. There is an alternative to marriage and that is to become civil partners.

You would need to make new will if you marry or become civil partners. 

Have you put lasting powers of attorney in place yet? If not you should. If either of you lost mental capacity through accident or illness even as a married or CP couple, handing your partners financial affairs would be very difficult without an LPA in place, the difficulties would be worse for an unmarried couple.

p00hsticks

Savvy_Sue said:

The big advantage is in avoiding Inheritance Tax on the first death: nothing is due on anything left to a spouse or civil partner.

This ^.

Plus, if either of you are lucky enough to be in a defined benefit pension scheme, you may find that they will only pay a survivors pension to spouses or official civil partners, not 'common law' partners. (Other such as parts of the civil service may recognise non-formal relationships providing that you complete some paperwork acknowledging your partner.)

And if you are on a low income I think that there may be bereavement benefits that are payable to the surviving spouse. 

I've posted on this forum before about how my OH & me got married without telling anyone after around 30 years together so that we could ensure that the survivor would receive a spouses pension in the event of the first death. The total cost was about £100 for the simplest registry office do with no guests. 

DavidT67

CAB article on the advantages of marriage over living together.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/living-together-marriage-and-civil-partnership/living-together-and-marriage-legal-differences/

Emmia

Also, your current wills will be immediately invalid once you're married (if you do this), so you'll need to make new ones. 

And yes, being married makes splitting up (divorcing) harder, more expensive and risks the wealthier parties assets - I actually know a couple of people at work who have done the mortgage, kids etc. and been very happy get married and then have (not that long later) got  divorced... marriage is different somehow from being unmarried.

p00hsticks

Emmia said:

Also, your current wills will be immediately invalid once you're married (if you do this), so you'll need to make new ones. 

And yes, being married makes splitting up (divorcing) harder, more expensive and risks the wealthier parties assets - I actually know a couple of people at work who have done the mortgage, kids etc. and been very happy get married and then have (not that long later) got  divorced... marriage is different somehow from being unmarried.

No personal experience, but I think in general it's having children and owning property together that are more of a factor in making spitting up harder and  more expensive  that divorce per se - and at least the fact that there is a formal marriage provides some sort of legal framework for handling the split.

You just need to look over on the house renting buying and selling board on this forum to see the problems unmarried  couples who have bought a property together have if they split. 

Keep_pedalling

Emmia said:

Also, your current wills will be immediately invalid once you're married (if you do this), so you'll need to make new ones. 

And yes, being married makes splitting up (divorcing) harder, more expensive and risks the wealthier parties assets - I actually know a couple of people at work who have done the mortgage, kids etc. and been very happy get married and then have (not that long later) got  divorced... marriage is different somehow from being unmarried.

That may be the case for couples without children, but when children are involved it can be even more difficult to accomplish a fair outcome. Anyway the OP seems to be in a stable happy relationship and it is more important to protect the financial interests of the children and partner should one of them meat an unfortunate early demise.

comeandgo

Emmia said:

Also, your current wills will be immediately invalid once you're married (if you do this), so you'll need to make new ones. 

And yes, being married makes splitting up (divorcing) harder, more expensive and risks the wealthier parties assets - I actually know a couple of people at work who have done the mortgage, kids etc. and been very happy get married and then have (not that long later) got  divorced... marriage is different somehow from being unmarried.

Depends which country they are in.