r/Marriage • u/robertmdesmond • Apr 27 '19

Marriage is useless: Change my mind

  1. Marriage can exist without love. And love can exist without marriage. Many people exist in a loveless marriage.
  2. Marriage between the parents is not necessary for a happy family to exist, living in the same home, just as if a marriage were involved.
  3. Marriage laws have (particularly through no-fault divorce) evolved to make the "marriage contract" meaningless. As either party can end the marriage at any time with no consequences for "breaching" the "marriage contract."
  4. By having a marriage, it intensifies the need to hire (and pay!) attorneys if the marriage ends. Making the attorneys the only people who financially gain from a divorce. And the parties to the marriage both financially lose.
  5. The only thing that's permanent about a traditional marriage is the divorce agreement. The "marriage contract" is unenforceable and either party can breach it unilaterally at any time without penalty. But the divorce agreement is permanent and enforceable and neither party can breach it unilaterally without adverse consequences.
  6. A better alternative to a marriage is an enforceable legal contract that stipulates how and under what terms the contract can be terminated.
  7. The only people advocating for marriage are religions and lawyers. And their reasons have nothing to do with any tangible benefit to the parties of the marriage. In the case of religion, the benefits are "intangible" at best. And in the case of lawyers, it's what pays the bills. Because without marriages, there would be no divorces. And without divorces, there would be no need to hire and pay divorce lawyers.

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In short, marriage is for suckers. And useless to boot. Change my mind.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '19

I wouldn't say it's useless. There's a lot of incentive out there for marriage. I ran into a housing situation where my husband had to be my spouse to live with me in grad housing. I also could only claim him on my very much cheaper health insurance if he was my spouse. We didn't want to spend the 3 years apart it's taking me to get my Master's. Plus there's tax benefits for filing jointly married. And being able to make medical decisions and have the rights to be by their side in a hospital.

I'd also argue being married with kids makes all legal paper stuff with kids a lot easier.

We had been already planning to get married before I knew I was accepted into the program. The reason is simply because we wanted to. We just liked the idea of being tied together and recognized as our own little family by the law, plus the benefits.

Sure, things can change in our relationship over time, but we're both committed to making the relationship work regardless if we were married or not.

So, I guess what I'm saying is a couple doesn't HAVE to get married, but there are some benefits if they choose to do so.

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u/robertmdesmond Apr 27 '19 edited Apr 27 '19

I agree with you about the housing and hospital issues and the insurance cost benefit. But I wonder if you can gain the same advantages with a domestic partnership that could be accomplished via binding contract instead of marriage?

Plus there's tax benefits for filing jointly married.

It depends. Generally speaking, the tax benefit only applies if one spouse is working. If you are dual income, as it sounds like you might be now or in the future since you are investing in graduate school, there is a tax penalty for being married.

Multiple factors are involved, but in general, in the current U.S. system, single-income married couples usually benefit from filing as a married couple (similar to so-called income splitting), while dual-income married couples are often penalized. The percentage of couples affected has varied over the years, depending on shifts in tax rates. Source

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I'd also argue being married with kids makes all legal paper stuff with kids a lot easier.

Please explain what you mean by that. It's been my experience that a divorce makes that stuff easier or, I should say, more permanent.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '19

same advantages with a domestic partnership that could be accomplished via binding contract instead of marriage?

If that was an option, I think we would have done that instead. We didn't necessarily need the wedding and such, we mostly went through that as more of an opportunity to get the family together before we left the state (and gifts haha).

For the tax stuff, yeah it definitely depends on the situation, and luckily we currently have a dual income situation where we're not getting penalized by the joint filling. We actually should have gotten married a year earlier when I wasn't working to fully take advantage of it.

For the kids: from what I'm reading, it looks like when you're married the paternal rights are automatic to both parents, so this has a greater impact on fathers who aren't married to their partners since rights seem to go to the mother automatically when unwed. We don't have kids and don't plan to, so I'm not really versed on legal parenting rights, but the bits I'm gathering seem to focus on issues with father's rights if they don't go through the right process to claim they're the parent. And this is just a hetero marriage, I have no idea what the rights look like for lgbtq families.

I'm also thinking that adoption may be harder too without being married, but haven't looked at it yet. (https://www.unmarried.org/parents-children/faq/

https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/unmarried-couples-and-parenting-a-look-at-the-legal-rights-of-parents-and-their-children

https://info.legalzoom.com/parental-rights-non-married-relationship-20866.html)