Why are we getting married? ask commenters. Why not simply live together, and avoid the tax hit?
Well, it's outre, I know, but I sort of believe in marriage. I believe in the act of committing for life to another person. I believe in the power and the joy of facing your life as a team. I think you can have a very happy, fulfilled life without being married, and before I met Peter, I was preparing to. But my life is even happier and more fulfilled with him. So naturally, I want to start building that life as Team McSudelman.
There's a reason for the social role of "spouse". And there's a reason for all of the legal and social systems that have grown up around that role: they reinforce and strengthen it. It would be much harder to do many of the things we want and intend to do, for and with each other, without that useless little piece of paper.
But more to the point, once we'd decided to do what spouses do, why wouldn't we, well, become official spouses? Just because I enjoy akward five-minute conversations about how my "partner" is a he, not a she, and you know, we really love each other, but we just don't believe we need society's ratification . . . I don't, I assure you. And I'm happy to have society's ratification. Celebrating our marriage will be one question upon which society and I agree 100%.
There are tax consequences for couples whose incomes are roughly equal, as one commenter pointed out. But we are, sadly, not in the happy position of having dual half-million-dollar salaries we need to shelter from the grasping tax man. Besides, marriage is not an investment strategy. And I suspect that the more you treat it like an investment strategy, the less likely it is to work.
I mean if domestic partnership is working for you, I'm happy for you. But when I thought about the reasons not to get married, they mostly boiled down to an instinct for contrariness. I don't need to put myself through a bunch of legal hassle and domestic partner registration just to prove something to Jerry Falwell and my eighth grade history teacher.
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I believe in the act of committing for life to another person.
But it's not really - it's for life or until you decide to get a divorce. I really think it should be for life - the only way out is in a box. That being said the most you would get for killing a spouse is 3-5 minimum security and some community service.
If you want to joined into a "disolvable civin union" that's great. But, if you want to be married you need to enter into it knowing there is no getting out of it. We should save marrige for people who are really committed to each other.
Of what possible use is this suggestion? It will likely result in many murders which will prove once and for all that not everyone can commit to something life long. I think most of us already know that, on some hypothetical plain.
Ken,
If you can't commit to something for life than you have the option of a "disolvable civil union." These unions would the legally identical to marriage in every with except they would have divorce as an option.
Marriage should be reserved for those who are willing to make a lifetime commitment.
I wouldn't go as far as jmo3, but I'd favor restoring the idea that divorce requires fault, at least making it equally enforceable to any other contract--no divorce unless you can prove that the other side was unfaithful, abusive, or addicted to drugs or alcohol to a dangerous extent. And have the dissolvable civil union available for those who can't handle such a commitment.
That's really quite a silly suggestion. Just because you think you want to be together forever doesn't mean you actually do. If we could weed out the clueless then maybe, but I'd rather not stick people into loveless marriages because they were out to prove something to themselves when they were 19.
Edgehopper:
I don't see the use of forcing people to be with someone they would rather not, even if they are not bad people. Sometimes, things just don't work out. But, if you do have a no fault insurance, you can't exactly expect a no fault party to be financially responsible for the other one.
Jmo: The problem is that people are not aware that they are unable to commit. They may have every intention of making a life long commitment, but not the ability to do so. Remember, most people overestimate themselves.
Ken - If no-fault divorce was illegal, than it seems to me the law could allow the person wanting the divorce to claim the fault for the breakup on themselves, and let the division of property be done accordingly?
Ken-
If there are no minor children involved, I suppose a no-fault divorce isn't that offensive. If there are minor children involved, you don't divorce over piddly crap. There are few people more selfish than the parents of minor kids who get divorced because they feel "unfulfilled", or something similar.
Edge:
Absolutely, kids change the situation entirely. A divorce is breaking the commitment of marriage, not parenthood.
This is asinine. Marriage IS reserved for those who are willing to make a lifetime commitment. If you think that, going into it, you are not going to make it, either sign a pre-nup or don't do it.
"Disolvable civil union" is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. The rewards come with the commitment. If things don't work out, well, that's why they have divorce.
Typically, nobody gets into a marriage planning on a divorce.
Of what possible use is this suggestion? It will likely result in many murders
Guns don't kill people. Comments on blogs kill people.
From your comment, it does not seem you understand people very well. People change. What makes them happy also changes. Making a lifelong commitment is essentially the same as predicting that you will want the same thing for the rest of your life as you do now. This is just not how human beings are designed. I'm not saying it is not possible, but all too often people don't know what they want NOW, let alone what they will want decades later.
Secondly, for what purpose? Commitment, for its own sake, does not benefit anyone.
Making a lifelong commitment is essentially the same as predicting that you will want the same thing for the rest of your life as you do now.
That perspective on marriage is precisely why a lot of them fail -- many marriages are based on what I want, as opposed to an actual commitment to the other person that rides through the rocky times and comes out stronger for the doing of it.
Also, I've known a lot more 19 year olds who set out to prove something without any marriage commitment being involved at all, and wound up with burdensome child support issues, lost educational opportunities, and difficulties in forming relationships later, than those that simply exchanged the vows and moved foward with their lives. Too many marriages in later year seem to wind up on the rocks not because of something "proven" at age 19, but because irresponsible adults in their 30s or 40s decide they're tired of being responsible adults and want to reset the clock at 19 again. Life doesn't work like that, and people who try are not guaranteed success on the second (or third, or fourth) attempt if they haven't dealt with the personality flaws that destroyed the first attempt.
If commitment does not benefit anyone, then don't make one.
I do not see how someone who enters the bond of marriage has a legitimate complaint when discovering that it binds.
I meant to say "keeping commitment". If the marriage has obviously failed, staying married for the sake of commitment is silly imo. No one is usually served by it (you can make a case for children in some cases). The Commitment itself has no intrinsic value.
Also the bond of marriage does not actually bind, and if it did I suspect there would be a lot fewer marriages happening.
And how would this "a lot fewer marriages" be a problem?
They wouldn't even get to clog up the court system to divvy up their worldly good.
"And how would this "a lot fewer marriages" be a problem?"
It wouldn't.
MS wrote:
People who believe as MS does should not be permitted to marry until they get a clue.
Marriage is not about being happy, it's about mutually supporting each other, reproducing, becoming a productive citizen, and in all other ways participating in the human race. Happiness is a byproduct of doing those things well, not a goal to be achieved by finding a pleasing mate.
Jewish jurisprudence regarding marriages, which I'll use for this discussion to represent the general opinion of mankind (most cultures do have similar rules), recognized four legitimate reasons for divorce: adultery, physical or mental cruelty, abandonment, and refusal of sexual rights. These are all acts -- choices -- that break the community of the marriage, and make it untenable.
"Making your infantile spouse unhappy" does not appear on that list, for a good reason: everybody, no matter how well matched, experiences this at times. Saying "I'm not happy here" demonstrates only that one has identified a part of themselves that is immature. There's a cure for immaturity; one grows up. It's actually not all that difficult, and everybody benefits when the individual does it, most notably the individual who does it. Ironically, learning to be content with an irritating spouse is one of the best ways to produce happiness.
As to this:
Bosh. It benefits everyone: you, your spouse, the kids, the neighborhood, your employer, the culture at large, the whole world. But especially the kids.
It's of such great benefit, in fact, that society at large would be better off assigning marriage partners by lottery than it would be permitting marriages to form and dissolve over the selfish pattern MS represents. Choosing marriage partners by love is more genteel, but since we've become so selfish, we might do well to go back to contract marriages for a while until we learn how to be human again.
I thought this was a libertarian blog (and I'm not even libertarian, I'm a liberal). What you are saying is down right fascist. Marriage is not about being happy but about being a productive citizen? Reproducing? Really? So if both people are unhappy together, they should still suffer through the failed marriage just to "participate in the human race"? I guess it is a question of values.
I like the Mad Max angle - two enter, one leaves. If I were going to get married I'd have to insist on getting the shiny chainsaw.
Huh? What? Are people really asking "Why are you getting married?" I don't believe you. I call Straw-Man.
Slcgrad, you have no idea how deep the conspiracy goes. "Peter Suderman" is, in fact, a straw man whom Megan constructed just to write this post advocating marriage. And to scare off crows.
It was asked a couple times in the other comment thread, yeah.
I hear that question put to prospective married people all the time.
As a recently married woman of similar age and circumstance, I am thrilled for you.
Slcgrad, you have no idea how deep the conspiracy goes. "Peter Suderman" is in fact a straw man whom Megan constructed just so she could write this post advocating marriage. And to scare off crows.
I don't think marriage has much to do with society's approval. If you die without a will there are default provisions in state law that determine the disposition of your estate. If you form a corporation or partnership without negotiating an agreement there are default provisions in the business law that govern future eventualities (such as a dispute about business direction or division of proceeds in the even of liquidation).
Anyone through a contract can change almost all the provisions of marriage. They can contract how the kids will be raised in the event of breakup and who will get what property, but the fact of the mater is many cohabitating people do not enter a contract that provides for the likely eventualities of cohabiting. Who gets the house if the husband does most of the money stuff and put it in his name? Is the Dr who got a license during the marriage entitled to all her individual earnings if the marriage ends? The state simply makes a default contract. If you are going to co mingle your financial affairs (and possibly have children) it is totally forseeable that the marriage might end and require untangling finances and providing for children. If you do not contemplate what you will do if the marriage ends, then the State will write the best disposition that it can not knowing the particulars of this case. Just as it tries to provide for a partnership disolving absend any partnership agreement.
Au contrarie, monsieur. Marriage has everything to do with society's approval. The original purpose of marriage, in general, was making sure that society could slate some specific bloke with the job of being the kids' father. Now we have DNA testing, so marriage is not so necessary for identifying fathers (unless we stipulate the case of two identical twins, one of whom is the father, and the mother's married to one of them), but marriage is still how we form a family-type relationship with someone we are not related to by blood. The whole point of marriage is that society, and in particular, the state, recognises it.
Take the situation of cohabiting. People often share an apartment with people that they don't have any romantic relationship with - eg friends. Now imagine that an apartment owner has a flatmate to move in to help pay the bills. Relationships between them are great at first, but then detoriate. The apartment owner kicks the flatmate out. The flatmate then claims that they were in a marriage-like relationship and flatmate is entitled to a divorcee's share of the apartment. Our society, rightly or wrongly, distinguishes between "forming a partnership with someone for life" and "just renting out some spare space in your house". And society, I think, has an interest in reducing the number of legal battles (obviously lawyers may disagree). So if the state has a system for recognising partnerships from cohabiting, we can save on those sorts of legal bills.
Or we could make it simple: stop recognizing this idea that "forming a partnership" (without an explicit contract) confers some special legal rights just treat everyone like flat-mates. Seems pretty easy to me.
People don't want to treat everyone like flatmates. For example, people might well want to enter into a more mutually-dependent relationship, say where one spouse stays at home to look after a sick relative while the other earns the money. This is fine, unless the relationship falls apart. In those cases courts do tend to get involved (other options, where one spouse disappears into thin air, or kills their spouse0, have their own problems). In that case, some guidelines as to how the courts should handle the breakup, and a bright-line distinction between flatmates and spouses so people have a decent chance of figuring out which sort of relationship they're in makes sense to me.
So naturally, I want to start building that life as Team McSudelman.
I wish you every happiness, but: Rebrand! Rebrand!
Sudardle?
McSardleman?
"Ask your doctor if Sudardle is right for you."
"McSudelman's"
Worst. Pub. Ever.
Do not open a bar with that name. Other than that, go nuts.
I know you're not going to, but a thought about unofficial marriage. Don't go into discussions of "partners" and "society's ratification", just call him your husband and leave it at that. Have your non-down-payment-sized party, and save the $50 on the license. You can easily avoid a written-on-paper marriage while putting on a good show of doing it the same way as everyone else. Of course, it's your call - you're not interested, and I respect that. But if you really want the tax savings, you could do it without having to sound like a hippie.
Just say it: "I wanna be Mr. and Mrs. (Insert Husband's name here)"
that, and: "Oh, crap! I'm getting old!"
Whatever. Just hang on for a wild ride. The first few years are tough. After that, well, then you get old and die.
Congrats!
I'm one of the commenters who asked "why?", so yes, slc grad, we exist, and I appreciate Megan taking the time to post an answer.
I second Alsadius' comment about "awkward conversations." In social settings, i just introduce my partner as my wife. They are interested in the social protocol (who sits where, who may hit on whom), not in how we report our taxes to the government.
There are really two issues here. One issue is what you get out of government-marriage. Megan is rather cagey about this: "It would be much harder to do many of the things we want and intend to do, for and with each other, without that useless little piece of paper." Given that I have had no problem doing what most government-married people do without being government-married, I really wonder what those things are.
The other issue is what society gets out of government-marriage. Why do we have a special government-seal-of-approval for some voluntary relationships that we don't have for others? Most of the concrete reasons that people give for getting government-married (e.g. getting their employer to pay for their partner's health insurance) aren't really things that I would think society has any good reason to encourage.
A lot of people cite the positive externality of stable family relationships as a justification for government-marriage, but it's just as easy to get that via private contract and social sanction. I really don't see what the special-government-seal adds.
Hmmm. I'd always heard that (along with joint accounts) was one of the ways you ended up with a common law marriage.
Yes, but that's not a problem in a lot of places. The truth according to Wikipedia:
Hopefully a reduction in legal battles.
Take the case of a rich widower who hires a live-in housekeeper. Eventually the widower dies, of natural causes. Live-in housekeeper shows up claiming that they were secretly married, and she's entitled to 50% of his estate (or whatever the breakdown is in the area where rich widower lived). Widower's children say she's just out for the money, there was no marriage. How is the state to decide which one is right? If widower and live-in housekeeper had had a proper marriage ceremony, with witnesses and filed the documentation before the widower's death, this question would be easier to answer (the live-in-housekeeper could I suppose still commit fraud, but it would take more effort and let in more opportunities for detection).
Or take the situation where a person becomes badly ill - falls into a coma, and their flatmate claims that they are in a relationship and she has the right as next-of-kin to make medical decisions. Oh, and she belongs to some religious group with unusual views on what is medically right. The flatmates' parents, who would otherwise be next-of-kin, disagree streneously about the right medical treatment. The patient is incapable of indicating a preference. How are the courts to decide which set of orders the doctors should be following?
Also, if you're travelling around the world, not everywhere recognises cohabitation, but as far as I know, everywhere recognises a marriage contract between a man and woman.
We already know how to handle these legal questions among the unmarried: (1) contracts verifyably entered into by the parties, or (2) the defaults among unmarried parties. In other words, the housekeeper would get nothing unless a will existed saying she did. And the flatmate would have no say unless a medical power of attorney existed. Which both seem like quite reasonable outcomes to me.
Actually, its the idea of marriage -- some sort of legally binding but not contractually explicit agreement between the parties -- that creates the legal uncertainty. If the law just treated everyone as unmarried in all circumstances, the legal situation becomes clearer.
Well marriage is a legally binding contract, with some protections to try to check that each party entered into it freely consenting. Said protections are not perfect, but then I've read a few murder mysteries that turned around possibly-forged wills.
In other words, if Megan and Peter want to sign up simultaneously for wills and power-of-attorneys and all the other legal ins and outs of marriage, why shouldn't the state provide them with one nice tidy package to do so? Signing each contract separately strikes me as taking up a lot of paperwork. Of course, if you adore the thought of paying money to the legal system and absolutely get warm fuzzy feelings at the thought of paperwork, you'd go for the individual contracts, but why be surprised that other people might prefer to spend that time and money on a party with friends and family and a really stunning dress?
TracyW: If all the government did was to print boilerplate contracts and make them available in post offices, I would have few objections.
But government-marriage doesn't just enforce mutual contractual obligations between the parties. It also changes the relationship of the parties to the government, effectively making the rest of us unwilling parties to their contract. We tax them differently (effectively, we encourage one of them to stop working). We change their social security provisions (effectively, the rest of us give them more pension and disability insurance benefits). We change their immigration status (effectively, we let people in we otherwise wouldn't because of whom they are married to).
David: It's a democracy. If you don't think that society should give those rights to married people, then campaign against it and try to persuade everyone else to support you.
But I think the reason that there are all these adjustments is that many people in society, rightly or wrongly, recognise marriage as a special family relationship, and they want to do so. There are also often various adjustments that society makes for other close family relationships, eg passing on citizenship to children born outside the USA, tax deductions for dependent children, etc. Some decisions are inherently going to be made by the State(eg tax law, even with a flat tax the rate determined somehow and what is income defined somehow), in a democracy those decisions are likely to bear some relationship to what the people in the society actually want. And people appear to generally think that family should be special. In every country I can think of off the top of my head.
TracyW: Campaigning and persuading is precisely what I am trying to do. :-)
At least as far as tax law, several Scandanavian counties tax everyone as individuals without regard to marital status. I don't know about state pension and immigration law in those countries.
Family is special and important. There are many things in life that are special and important without the government being involved.
David - I was pointing out what we, and what society, gets out of government-approved marriage, which is a reduction in legal bills and time spent debating whether people are legally married to each other or not. If you don't like the current set of legal obligations, I am prepared to hear your arguments, but I assume your sudden change in the topic of debate means that you now agree with me that government recognition of marriage does at least potentially bring some benefits to couples and to society generally, excluding the legal profession perhaps.
TracyW: I wish I could say we had made progress toward agreement, but apparently not. Your claim is that what society gets out of having the government-stamp-of-approval is "a reduction in legal bills and time spent debating whether people are legally married to each other". But the alternative I am proposing is that no one is ever legally married, because the law would simply have no "married" category. It seems to me that, under that proposed alternative, we would spend even less time debating what various kinds of partners owe each other when the relationship sours, because the answer would simply always be "nothing," unless there is a written contract clearly stating otherwise.
The case you appear to be trying to optomize for is one in which one partner slips into financial dependence on the other for any years, and is then suddenly abandonded. In that case, we might wish for the abandonded, dependent partner to get something out of the deal. But given how few relationships work that way, and given that I don't think society should be encouraging relationships work like that, I am more than willing to say to those people: too bad, you should have negotiated a contract.
David, I don't follow you. You say that you don't want the laws to recognise a "married" category. But you also appear to be fine with people making wills (thus creating a "testee" category and a "beneficiary" category) and making medical powers-of-attorney and so forth. You also appear to be fine with people making a contract if they both want a set up where one supplies the money and the other some other goods and services (judging by your comment "too bad, you should have negotiated a contract").
So why do you object to the law bundling a set of legal rights and obligations up into one, and calling it "marriage"? If special contracts about what happens to your assets when you die are fine to be called "wills", what's so wrong about applying special words for another form of contract?
If you don't like some of the legal rights or duties of marriage you're free to campaign against them, the definition of marriage has changed over the centuries already, what I don't get is why you're so opposed to such a contract existing at all. If you like paperwork and running risks of massive legal hassle you are free not to get married and instead negotiate all contracts separately, but why do you want to insist that other people also negotiate all contracts separately rather than just signing up for a package deal called "marriage"?
TracyW: I'm sorry; I think I misunderstood you.
I have no objections to bolierplate relationship contracts that clarify what most people are likely to want from their partner. Like boilerplate wills, they could be sold in office supply stores for $20. And I have no objections to the state enforcing such contracts as they would any others.
What I object to is the state privledging some special state-approved relationship contracts over others, and telling the rest of us that we have to treat the parties differently once they have signed one of these special state-approved contracts.
What confused me was your use of the term "legally married," which I read as implying that the law would still define a special state-approved contract that would do more, legally, than an ordinary contract could do.
David: But being required by the state to treat people differently is also what happens if you sign a power-of-attorney and it comes into effect. Similarly executors of a will are legally required to treat beneficiaries different from non-beneficiaries. Legal adoptions also affect who is next-of-kin and who schools must deal with. Laws mandating that employers give compassionate leave for certain family members' deaths also require people to treat other people differently based on recognised family relationships (some established in ways more fundamental than contract can manage).
And, while I favour much freer immigration laws than those currently generally applying around the world, given our current state of immigration law I think allowing marriage partners into the country is a better situation than not doing so. Love is not exclusively determined by nationality, why shouldn't the state let marriage partners in, given that it's determined to restrict immigration in the first place? Yes, some people will marry fraudulently, this is a cost I am willing to bear. Yes, we could revamp the immigration laws to allow anyone to bring in one person every 10 years or whatever, but until whatever law change you think desirable is in place, a special right for immigration strikes me as making sense. (disclosure, I'm benefitting from this myself vis-a-vis the UK, and no I did not marry him for the visa, I married him for the free IT support.:) )
Tracy: A contract is a sort of transfer of ownership rights. As a parent, I "own" certain rights and responsibilities via-a-vis my child, and if I give that child up for adoption, I am transfering that "ownership" to another person. As an competent adult, I "own" the right to make medical decisions about myself, and when I sign a medical power of attorney, I transfer that "ownership" to another person.
But neither I nor my romantic partner own the right to a tax subsidy, or a pension subsidy, or the right to allow someone to immigrate. So such a right shouldn't come into existence by our codifying our relationship into a contract.
I think the confusion arises because you view, for example, the medical power of attorney granted by marriage as something that the state compels a third party care provider to do by virtue of the marriage contract. I would claim that the third party care provider is already compeled to follow my wishes in medical care, because I own those decisions. The medical power of attorney is just transfering that ownership to another person. The third party still has the same duties as before: to follow the directives of whoever owns that right.
By the way, I appreciate your engaging in this thoughtful conversation. (Also by the way, although I dont't think automatic spousal immigration is a good policy, I certainly don't fault you for taking advantage of it. I don't think the mortgage interest deduction is a good policy either, but I certainly claim it.)
But neither I nor my romantic partner own the right to a tax subsidy, or a pension subsidy, or the right to allow someone to immigrate. So such a right shouldn't come into existence by our codifying our relationship into a contract.
Why not?
Rights come into existance when someone turns 18. Rights come into existance when someone gives birth to a baby (eg the baby has citizenship of some country). Tax collectors need to be able to see other people's private tax records in the course of their work, causing rights to come into existence after a set of checks and oaths. Rights are a human creation. They can be a very important one. But they're ours, and we can define them as we want, for example by changing the minimum voting age. Why should a right not come into existence if you notify the legal system that a relationship and a commitment exist, assuming that it's a reasonably democratic country and that change has the general support of the majority of the population? Do you have a better way of deciding what rights should exist and which ones shouldn't than a roughly democratic approach? (I say "roughly" in the hope of avoiding arguments over the ins and outs of constitutions and whether an electoral college is all that democractic compared to proportional representation and so forth).
I think the confusion arises because you view, for example, the medical power of attorney granted by marriage as something that the state compels a third party care provider to do by virtue of the marriage contract.
To be more precise, I view a medical power of attorney as the state compelling a third party care provider to take account of one person's decisions rather than another. (Obviously in many cases the third party care providers are probably happy to just have someone competent to make some decisions and don't need any compelling). And this is the point of rights, they do affect what other people can do. If you own some property, your rights affect what strangers can and can't do with that property.
And thank you also for this interesting discussion. Even if we never come to an agreement, it's clarifying my own understanding of marriage's role in society for me.
One example: domestic partnership benefits are more expensive, and taxed, than spousal benefits.
I suppose that makes sense if one of you freelances while the other is stabily employed. My partner and I would probably marry under those circumstances, too.
That said, I don't really see why society would want to encourage such arrangements. (Yes, society would like to see everyone insured. But creating a system under which some people are allowed to add one other person to their insurance in some circumstances seems like a rather poor and convoluted means to that end.)
If you get them at all - at my firm they are only available for same-sex couples.
I just used "girlfriend" until it became "fiance", but we were both under 30, so it did not sound so odd. Someone once referred to my now-wife as my "partner" - I informed him that we were not cops, did not play doubles tennis and had not opened our own law firm together.
Megan,
Nothing but absolute happiness that you've found someone to share the sublime joy of marriage. There is a huge percentage of the population that has:
A. Forgotten why they wanted to get married.
B. Forgotten why they got married.
C. Starting thinking that marriage is for the good times, the so-so times, and the "it's bad right now but I can see it getting better" times.
I'm coming up on my 4 year anniversary. We haven't gone through a truly tough time yet. I made the commitment, the oath, in front of my family and friends and God, that this was a sacred bonding. And I quite literally pray that when the seriously tough times come, that I'll be man enough to remain hopeful and cheerful and help work together to bring us back out of those times.
For those commenters who have said things like "It's not logical to commit yourself to a situation and think that you'll always want it"....well, they have either forgotten the point, missed it completely in the first place, or are trying to fool themselves.
I could say the same thing about having a child: Why would I want to commit myself to draining myself financially, time, sleep, and the so many other sacrifices of parenthood. And yet, the human race endures. It's as if these things transcend selfish emotion.
I suspect that the more you treat it like an investment strategy, the less likely it is to work.
As a married man, and one whose marriage has not been without it's tough moments, I'm going to disagree.
Granted, a marriage should not be a purely financial decision. But what makes a marriage endure--and endure fairly happily, not gay-politician's-wife-with-permanent-strained-grin endure--is common goals. If you want to become (say) editor-in-chief of the Washington Post with 3 beautiful children , then your husband needs to want you to become editor-in-chief of the Washington Post with 3 beautiful children. If you want to let bikers do body shots off of you, then your husband has to want bikers to do body shots off of you. Or whatever.
Now, obviously, compromise and give-and-take make a successful marriage, and sacrifice--even of things you consider very important--is almost always inevitable. That's what makes common goals so important: they reduce the amount of sacrifice, and they make it worthwhile.
When it comes to picking a life partner, it pays to think more like you would when picking an investment (Does he get me closer to my goals or farther away?) than when picking an entree (What sounds good right now?)
It's not romantic, but neither is a protracted custody fight.
Not to go too far into the weeds, but one of the excellent things about our relationship is that we agree on the major things, especially money
That is indeed an excellent thing, and I wish you every happiness.
many marriages are based on what I want, as opposed to an actual commitment to the other person that rides through the rocky times and comes out stronger for the doing of it.
As one of my friends put it before her (lovely, outdoor, Southern) wedding, "Marriage is about giving a $#&* about someone else for the first time in your life."
Too many marriages in later year seem to wind up on the rocks not because of something "proven" at age 19, but because irresponsible adults in their 30s or 40s decide they're tired of being responsible adults and want to reset the clock at 19 again.
If I could go back to 19, there's lots I do differently, but lots I'd do the same, too. But I can't, and I don't sit around fantasizing that I can. At least, I used to, but then I saw what the evil bankers did to poor Edmund Andrews after he tried to go back. :)
"I believe in the act of committing for life to another person."
But neither you, nor your potential husband, is making such a commitment. Marriage isn't "for life."
Marriage lasts only until one of you isn't happy. Then you divorce. On the contrary, our legal and social systems are designed to facilitate easy divorce. They undermine marriage.
If it's you who decides she's not happy, you know going into the marriage that he'll be on the hook financially to you - potentially for the rest of his life. The reverse is seldom the case. I suspect that's why you are couching it in the terms that you do.
You are getting a great deal.
Does not follow. That the system is designed to encourage everyone unhappy to divorce does not mean that everyone takes it up.
Incidentally, unhappy couples who do not divorce tend up end up happier than those who do.
Mischief:
Economics emphasizes "revealed preferences" over stated preferences. If you were able to leave a relationship and didn't, we would say you prefered to stay. If you say "I would have prefered to leave but I didn't" we dismiss that as meaningless nonsense.
With this in mind, I would say that marriage is not a binding comitment. A binding comitment is something you can't get out of even if you would prefer to do so. But you can get out of marriage if you prefer to do so. And if you don't go out of it, we would say that you prefered not to. There is nothing there to distinguish a commitment from a preference.
Did I say anything about preferences?
First, I think its a little mean-spirited to kick around the potential for divorce before you are even MARRIED. Not that it probably means anything but congratulations. I hope the two of you are very happy. And this is speaking as someone who has been divorced (recently) and believes in marriage.
Second, I think a nice happy medium between 'No divorce ever' and our current 'I'm bored, I want a divorce' culture, is a 60/40 prenup in the event of infidelity, instead of the standard 50/50 divorce. It attaches a penalty, but not an insane one. Enough that it forces someone who is thinking of 'bailing' on the relationship to give thought to what they are doing. "Hey, I'm bored, but if I fool around, I could forfeit 10% of our shared holdings." It won't stop divorce or infidelity, but it will make people think. And people who have to put up with cheating spouses get a little something for the headache.
There are some people in the "I'm bored, I want a divorce" but the high divorce numbers in this country are partly due to serial divorces. If a single person has four divorces, then it takes four people to never have a divorce to bring the divorce rate up to 50%.
I'd say its about 50/50 'I'm bored, I want a divorce', and 'I picked an abusive/addictive/shiftless partner'. Sometimes people are divorced for very good reason. However, other times, people are divorced because its not the fairy tale they expect, or its not as much fun as the dating game was.
Where are you getting your statistics?
I've thought there should be a three-strikes law for divorce: once you've been divorced three times, you can not legally get married again.
"But when I thought about the reasons not to get married, they mostly boiled down to an instinct for contrariness."
I'm really glad and surprised to see such simple, honest self reflection. As soon as I read that it characterized to a letter the 3 couples I know who aren't married and spend quite a bit of time telling everyone why they're not. I've always felt this "instinct for contrariness" behind their reasons, but never could have put it down to 3 words before.
And I really don't understand it either. Marriage is a word, an institution, an act of both public and private commitment. I don't get not wanting to do it if you really are committed to each other. I understand not carrying what society thinks about your relationship, but it seems just a bit odd to "make a statement" with your own relationship by effectively changing the title of your relationship.
But I'm not bashing those contrarians either (just confused at their logic), as I've got plenty of flaws and inconsistencies of my own.
I am happy for you. I have read these free spirited souls on this page with a someone bemused eye. But I have found that in very sad cases, where one partner finds that one is going to die--one of the first things this couple does is marry. Why is that?
I told a friend my theory--and she told me this story. She lived with her boyfriend for 10 years, never thinking that he would find it (and it was HIS choice) to marry. But the day he fell down in a faint--for unknown causes, and suddenly he began to think of his mortality.
They married within two months.
It is possible to over-analyze, particularly something which confounds logical analysis. The heart, as they say, has its reasons.
The marriage penalty has been reformed into and out of existence over the years, always in the name of fairness, I think the last time in the 70s.
It can't be reformed though, so long as the tax system is progressive.
You want two things:
1. Couples with the same total income should be taxed equally;
2. The tax should neither encourage nor discourage marriage.
Only with a flat tax is that mathematically possible.
Just ditch requirement #1 and let everyone, married or otherwise, file an individual return. Problem solved.
I'd rather argue that you in fact want both, proving that you really in fact want a flat tax system but just hadn't noticed it before.
The reason they don't let people file separately is the difficulty of ascertaining that only one person is taking joint deductions like home mortgage and childcare.
Or married couples could try the following: Have one of them fill-out a long form and take the mortgage interest, property tax deductions. Have the other just do the short form and take the standard deduction.
I have always presumed that this is illegal for married types like me, but I don't see how they could stop an unmarried couple from doing this.
Of course people can file separately. You just can't file Single when you're married (if your marriage is recognized under DOMA).
But yes, MFS is deliberately made unattractive to ease administration & discourage hundreds of big & little scams that 2 industrious people living together can concoct.
And yes, if one spouse itemizes, the other loses their standard deduction.
Let me rephrase: there are heavy penalties for filing separately.
Actually, that's not always difficult to ascertain. The real tax dodge is that one partner hires the other as an employee, and pays them enough so that their tax liability is lowered.
You could do that, but it would single-income families would pay a whole lot more tax than they do now. The "marriage penalty" only applies to couples who both work and both make enough money to pay significant taxes.
mazal tov
thanks for spreading a little sunshine today
First of all, congrats Megan. There's something nice about being officially married. It's a good thing to stand up in front your family and friends and commit to being together and taking care of each other. I wish you the best of luck.
(the rest is a response to the divorce discussion)
Having said that...
For those who say divorce should be impossible, I'm glad that it's not. I married with every intention of staying married for life. I had two kids and had every intention of staying married to their mother for life. I stuck it out through good times and bad times. Then the good times stopped and it turned into all bad times. I would argue that I was being emotionally abused but I doubt that I could have proven that in a court of law. I was miserable and she was miserable and the kids were unhappy because mommy and daddy were miserable and fighting. We tried counseling, we tried a few other things to resolve our problems. We even tried separation as a last resort. Throughout most of this, I was resolved to stay married even if I had to just give up and fake it. At some point, though, I realized that staying married would have made us both miserable and harmed our children. Now we are all happier (us and the children) and we can concentrate on doing things together for the children with out the animosity and hostility that colored our interactions while married.
Divorce is a pain in the ass, tough, and expensive. It was not something we undertook lightly and I'm glad that it was difficult. It should be difficult as it is better to fix a broken marriage than get a divorce. But it's not better to stay in one that can't be fixed.
I would argue that I was being emotionally abused
I'm very interested in this - why do you think she was doing this?
It's a long and boring tale of crazy people trying to live together...
As an aside, do we have the option of having our email address show up somewhere?
Great article and comments.
As a 23-year veteran of marriage to my "first wife" (she luuuuves it when I introduce her that way), I offer the following observations:
1) Marriage can work when spouses have common values and common goals. Spoused don't have to have the same personality types or even the same hobbies. In fact, independent interests are critical!
2) Good marriages - after much work - can even survive an affair, maybe not a Mark Sanford type, but a one-off indiscretion.
3) Big problems often happen when one spouse is a saver and the other is a spender.
4) All that said, marriage is usually a bad financial deal for men. A friend of mine - who went through a nasty divorce and, yes, he was unfaithful - describes marriage as a "bad contract." If you have way more financial resources than your spouse, a prenup is a dandy idea. Family courts are man eaters.
5) Finally, I agree with Megan that there are huge benefits to marriage. I sucked at being single -- too may trashy women.
I observe that men who are obsessed with the financial cost of marriage to themselves are strangely unobservant of the financial costs to the wives who usually sacrificed careers to raise children
May marriage turn you from a flower into an orchard.
Well, it's outre, I know, but I sort of believe in marriage. I believe in the act of committing for life to another person.
Why do you need a legal document to do that. I'm committed to my partner/wife/significant other/whatever for life, but we aren't getting married.
I believe in the power and the joy of facing your life as a team.
Again, what do you need legal recognition of your team for?
And there's a reason for all of the legal and social systems that have grown up around that role: they reinforce and strengthen it.
Do they? Have a look at divorce rates.
It would be much harder to do many of the things we want and intend to do, for and with each other, without that useless little piece of paper.
What exactly is harder without the piece of paper?
Just because I enjoy akward five-minute conversations about how my "partner" is a he, not a she, and you know, we really love each other, but we just don't believe we need society's ratification . . . I don't, I assure you.
Yeah, those are annoying, but why not just do what I do? I just call her my wife, even though we aren't legally married (although by common law we probably are by now).
But we are, sadly, not in the happy position of having dual half-million-dollar salaries we need to shelter from the grasping tax man.
You'll still take a hit, and for what? You're basically paying the government an annual fee for being married. Who needs that?
Besides, marriage is not an investment strategy. And I suspect that the more you treat it like an investment strategy, the less likely it is to work.
You don't treat the relationship as an investment strategy, of course, but a marriage is a symbolic gesture. Why would I make a symbolic gesture that harms me and provides no tangible benefit for anyone?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think no one should get married, I just don't see the purpose for us, and for people similar to us. We're not religious, and I see marriage as a purely religious institution that has been codified into law (for both good and bad reasons). We won't see a financial benefit, and most importantly, a wedding is usually a huge expense for what is essentially just a big party. We said screw the party, we're using that money towards a down payment on a house, which we bought for a steal this year.
So why get married? Unless you're religious and require your church's blessing, get a financial benefit, or just like spending a lot of dough on a huge party for friends and family, don't. Just say you are married. No one knows the difference.
We need legal recognition of our team for the reasons that Rob Lyman breaks down. The legal structures surrounding marriage matter. That's why gay couples want them.
As a gay aside, Ramesh Ponnuru has proposed permitting unmarried people to revocably designate a legal next-of-kin with all the rights that implies. He does so because he wants to avoid gay marriage, but I think it's a great idea regardless. Why shouldn't you have the right to declare your (non-sexually-involved) roommate and BFF the person who makes emergency medical decisions, gets your stuff if you die, and can sue for wrongful death, if you think your roommate is better than your mother or brother? Seems very sensible.
You already can, if your roommate is of the opposite sex to you. You marry them. I understand that consummation of the marriage was dropped as a legal requirement quite a long time ago, the Catholic church I presume still has its own take on it. So genuine question, what would this new option add? (Apart from it's stated purpose of avoiding same-sex marriages for those who really don't want to apply the word marriage to same-sex relationships, for the sake of simplicity in the English language I favour just extending marriages to cover same-sex ones.)
I suppose that's an option if you don't think you'll ever marry anyone else, or if we're going to make divorce a heck of a lot cheaper and easier, and if your roommate is of the opposite sex (which roommates--don't know if you've noticed or not--often aren't).
But seriously: what this adds is a degree of control over one's life and property which does not currently exist, at virtually no cost to anyone. We'll have to expand the county vital statistics office slightly, but that's it.
If we extend marriage to cover same-sex relationships, then I can't see how it matters what sex your roommate is.
Thanks for explaining the benefit that a more limited legal set up would add. It is an interesting idea that way, I would be interested to hear more arguments pro and con, perhaps from someone who is more of a legal expert than me.
You're committed to your partner/wife/significant other/whatever for life, but you don't want to let the state in on the secret? Why not?
Legal recognition of a marriage is valuable if someone is skeptical about said commitment, and one half of the marriage is, for whatever reason (dead, hallucinating, whatever) unable to confirm their side of the commitment. It's also useful if the relationship does fall apart in a really bad way. And finally, it's useful for those people who most definitely didn't have any intention of making a commitment to person x while person x has an interest in claiming such a commitment was made.
Of course, if you absolutely adore the idea of possibly paying large amounts of money to lawyers and potentially wasting vast amounts of time in court and on paperwork, then failing to make this symbolic gesture will of course be a net gain to you. I presume you and your spouse also haven't made a will, in the pleasurable anticipation of even more legal complications arising in the event of you dying intestate.
Those of us however who have other things to do with our money and time do engage in symbolic gestures like letting the state in on who we've made lifelong commitments to, and writing wills. We also engage in other pointless symbolic gestures like putting our house numbers on letterboxes and have a tendency to say things like "a verbal contract is worth the paper it's written on". I suppose you think it's weird of us, but to me your way sounds even weirder.
As someone with an "instinct for contrariness" (though not about marriage in particular), this comment has "instinct for contrariness" written all over it.
However, I think that the whole issue can be boiled down to this:
Why would I make a symbolic gesture that harms me and provides no tangible benefit for anyone?
Symbolic benefits can have tangible results; much argument against marriage ignores or is unaware of this fact. While for some people, the tangible benefits aren't there, or are small, many people underestimate the tangible benefits to themselves, especially because the tangible benefits are often hard to quantify and are often non-obvious at the individual level.
In a non-marriage vein: why do people make the effort to complete degrees in majors which have low marketability? Why would it matter to someone if they only have 117 units of a psychology degree, instead of 120, if they aren't going to grad school? Because there's a symbolic benefit to completing the task, and that symbolic benefit often has tangible benefits in the long run.
I should point out to the "Why get married?" crowd that legal marriage confers legal next-of-kin status, which has benefits in extreme and unforeseen circumstances, and also offers the happy couple a nifty set of default rules for various property transactions.
You can contract around some, but not all, of these default rules if you want to go to more trouble, but you can't be legal next-of-kin at all without the government seal of approval.
Major reason to get married: Social Security benefits.
Surely that's more of a 2LT reason to get married, given how small they are.
The Marriage Penalty is overblown. First, its not a lot of money & 40% of earners don't pay income tax anyway. Second, it only punishes couples who make about the same amount of money (& couples with a single earner are better off). Third, it only applies to income taxes; on the estate and gift tax side, marriage is an enormous benefit. Fourth, as someone pointed out earlier, a person who is married gets the benefit of lots of laws.
The most important thing is that calling my now-wife a "girlfriend" or "partner" for the rest of my life would be lame, icky & inadequate.
[i]The Marriage Penalty is overblown[/i]
The last time I calculated it, we were at a cumulative savings of $218,000 excluding interest. Yes, we make the same amount and we make enough to pay taxes.
We haven't experienced the downside of the estate tax or gift tax laws yet.
I agree that there are numerous smaller benefits to being married and many irritating disadvantages to not being married, both legal and social. We both happen to be divorced with grown children, which makes a difference. For us, $218k is a lot of money.
Congratulations, Megan (and to the rest of Team McSudelman)!
I'm newly wed myself. Before making it legal, my husband and I had lived together for two and half years--one and a half of them spent in a small studio apartment. So I didn't think you could get more committed than that.
But I was wrong. Our wedding immediately opened up a whole new level of intimacy that I didn't know existed. And I now realize there's an infinite continuum on which love might grow, with time. So in addition to all of the practical reasons to get married, there's also this. I know unmarried partners experience greater intimacy over time too, but marriage may remove even more limits.
Talk about outre: as an old Bible-thumper, I find it somewhat disconcerting that no one- no one(!)has come at the marriage vs cohabitation issue from the traditional moral standpoint, that is, that it is wrong to live together in fornication. One of the cardinal tenets of the Judeo-Christian tradition that once informed the American culture is apparently in even more trouble than I thought.
Sorry if this comes across as somewhat morose, but life is like that.
Successful marriages end when one spouse buries the other. There is something deeply human about long term relationships. Typically if one is bereaved of a spouse, it takes somewhere close to three years to recover. That illustrates the depth of connection that we make when we live together, make a deep commitment, and share all of life's joys and sorrows.
Don't know your plans, none of my business, but one of the most amazing moments of my life is seeing my minutes old daughter gaze into her mothers eyes and the reaction of pure head over heels love that it elicited in my wife. That small creature with the amazing gift of 'parent manipulation' is now a young woman roaming the world. Our life has been probably typical; many joys, the travails of illness, the ups and downs of work. 29 years and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
I wish you and your future husband all the joys possible. Savor each day whatever it brings, good or bad.
Derek
I don't believe in marriage. Why? Between myself, my girlfriend / significant other / partner / whatever, and our immediate families, there have been 14 marriages - three of which are still intact. One of those failed marriages is mine; two of them are hers.
She and I have been living in "sin" for 22 years now. This is more than 3X the length of the average marriage in the US.
If it works for you, fine - you can still keep it.
My husband (of, let's see, fifteen years now) and I lived together for about two and a half years before we married too. During that time, we graduated from college, got jobs that entailed either spending 100% of our time together or spending 0% of our time together for weeks on end (long story), got simultaneously laid off, moved to England for half a year, lived in a Notting Hill Gate hostel for the first month-plus, moved to a different state upon our return to the US, got the same job in two competing companies, moved from our one-bedroom apartment to a two bedroom duplex (for a lot of our first day there, we stood in different rooms shouting to one another, "I'm in the _______! Where are you?" just for fun), and had my not-yet-husband's unemployed best friend move in and live on our couch for a couple of months.
We thought we had commitment DOWN. Then we got married, and on our honeymoon, we were in a motorcycle accident on the island of Ibiza. Thankfully, neither of us was badly hurt, but boy oh boy, did that change our perspective on how marriage had changed our relationship: we became abruptly aware that if, say, one of us had been paralyzed, the other was unequivocally on the hook. It was exceedingly clarifying. We now advise engaged people to go on nice safe honeymoons... but being covered in road rash and unable to bend our limbs for two weeks in a hotel in Spain was THE defining moment in our early married life.
The three kids have been THE defining moments of the rest of our first decade and a half, but cross that bridge when you come to it. Congratulations!
TracyW,
Just to expand briefly on the next-of-kin form idea, suppose you have two heterosexual single moms who live together to share rent, provide mutual babysitting, carpool, etc. They don't want to marry each other (not being lesbians), and indeed they each hope to meet and marry a man.
It seems to me perfectly sensible that one or both of them might decide that her roommate should be legal next-of-kin. That means maximum stability in child-rearing (mom dies, but "other" mom gets custody), allocation of property that might be congenial (no more income from roommate to help with the rent, but you get her bank account to help out, and maybe a wrongful death suit), and medical decision-making that might be sensible (haven't spoken to mom for years because of a dispute about the loser boyfriend/father of child). That's a lot of legal paperwork, as I'm sure you know.
So they fill out the legal next-of-kin paperwork (quick, easy), record it at the vital statistics office, and go merrily on their way. Later, when one of them marries and moves out, the next-of-kin designation is presumptively revoked by the marriage and alights on the new husband.
It's simple and it empowers people to make their own decisions with a minimum of legal fees.
That means, of course, it will never be enacted.
You presume that they would want it revoked.
True, the woman's next-of-kin is her husband, but that doesn't mean she and the other woman don't want her to be the other woman's next-of-kin. And what if her husband and she both die in an accident?
Bumped down in priority would suffice. After all, marriage does that to blood relationships.
You presume that they would want it revoked.
I presume that most people would, yes, but a bump in priority is fine, too; these are details to be worked out based on what people seem to prefer. The basic idea remains sound.
And I said nothing about the effect on the "other woman's" next-of-kin designation; when I marry, my father is no longer my closest kin (for instance), but if he's unmarried, then I am still his closest kin.
RE "The Marriage Penalty is overblown."
Sure it is, for now. That's because the tax law of 2001 deliberately made it so. Beginning in 2003, the Joint brackets of 10% and 15% apply at exactly double the thresholds of the Single brackets of 10% and 15%. Thus, no "penalty" exists until well into the 25% bracket. For 2009 taxes, that means no marriage penalty at all for two people each earning up to about $78,000 a year. So, for most younger couples getting married, there is no penalty vs being single. Even if both people have moved on up the scale and have $120,000 a year in income, the penalty for 2009 comes to $1,200 versus filing as Single status. [calculations assume no itemizing and no dependent children].
Prior to the 2001 law, the marriage penalty amounts were quite substantial even for relatively modest incomes. Two newlyweds in tax year 2000, each earning a mere $32,500 a year, would have paid $1300 more in total by virtue of being married! That was a big chunk of their money!
There is no guarantee that the coming changes in brackets will be penalty-neutral. In particular, the gap between the 28% bracket and the 33% bracket will jump to 28 vs 36. There is also scope for fiddling around with thresholds, since many taxable incomes over $300,000 are currently only in the 2nd highest bracket, not the highest.
Bottom Line: While at times it may or may not "cost" financially to get married, it consistently is pretty much financially awful to get divorced....
> we just don't believe we need society's ratification
Maybe marriage once was about getting society's ratification, but now civil marriage is your way of instructing society that now they have some legal obligations to treat your relationship specially. For example, courts must excuse your partner from testifying against you. For example, the social security administration is obliged to give you some of your partner's benefits if he dies. For example, the IRS is obliged to re-basis all of your assets if he dies. For example, hospitals are obliged to allow you to visit your partner.
Marriage does not kill a living relationship so much as it mummifies one that has been lying in state for some time...