If you truly love your partner, does a ring and a ceremony really do anything?
I know there are certain legal situations where an official marriage changes who has certain rights, but aren’t those same rights available if you make other legally-official decisions E.G. a will or trusts, etc?
I’m generally curious why people get married beyond the “because I love them” when it costs so much money.
People have already pointed out the legal and financial aspects. But I also want to address the philosophical aspect of your question, which I think you had in mind. And I think the answer I would give you is this one:
Marriage has the meaning that you assign to it.
I strongly believe that if we got rid of any legal and financial benefits of marriage, even if we made it explicitly illegal, there would still be a bunch (or even a lot) of people who would get married.
I would compare it to a house fire. If my house was burning (and there were no living beings in it) and I could save 5 things, what would I save? What would you save? I would take, for example, my favorite soft toy from when I was a kid, and my old box filled with diaries. Is this worth any money? No. Does it have any value? To me, it does. To you, it doesn’t. Maybe you are a very rational person that isn’t attached to anything (or to nothing material) and you would indeed make the smartest choices, saving your passport and documents and money. Maybe you would save a small gift that someone important has given you. Maybe you would save the first guitar you ever bought. You save whatever has value and meaning to you. And these things have solely the meaning and value that you have attached to it.
Likewise, people have different value and meaning attached to marriage. If you look at it from a rational, logical side - it has its legal and financial perks and benefits and if they weren’t there, getting married would make no sense. But things don’t have to make sense. The meaning we assign to rituals, things, concepts, aren’t necessarily rational. They are, however, deeply personal.
So, as a side note, please beware of ridiculing people for their views on marriage or weddings, just like you wouldn’t want to ridicule or belittle someone for other things that mean a lot to them. Always sharing the last piece of bread. Always giving a coin to a homeless person. Having a breakfast for 30 minutes every morning. A good night kiss on the nose from their partner. Drawing a dick in the first snow of the winter. Some things mean a lot to people even if they do not rationally make sense.
In the case of marriage, of course, some of the meaning comes from culture, history, and tradition. Marriage might have had different purposes than it has now, and surely the origins weren’t that romantic. (Not saying, however, that marriage has to be romantic.) But it is there. It is important to some people simply because they have, at some point in their life, decided it is important for some reasons, rational or irrational, social, cultural, and hopefully personal too. To them, it makes sense, it has meaning, it has value. And whatever marriage or a wedding ceremony mean - you decide.
So the question you should be asking is not whether or not you should get married, it is what marriage means to you. Does it have any benefit or value in your eyes? Are the legal benefits enough for you to get married? What is your stance on divorce? Do you feel like you would get “closer together” with your partner? Would you feel it would make things harder to separate? There are a ton on questions like these that you can ask yourself, I hope you get the jist. There are not right or wrong answers. The only thing that is important is that the meaning you assign to marriage is (about) the same as the meaning your partner assigns to marriage. You can both not care about a spiritual meaning, but just get married for the benefits. You can both be a type of “whatever happens, we don’t get divorced, til death do us part”. You can be “we’ll keep reevaluating whether we still belong together”. You can also be “we get married because we have children and this is practical”. Or “we get married because I am hot and you are rich and when one of us loses their asset we split”. Or “we just want a fancy huge ass party to show our love in this very moment and celebrate it with our friends and whatever comes afterwards is secondary”. It doesn’t matter what your view is, it matters that you guys agree.
Where I live marriage is pretty close to being entirely symbolic. Not entirely, of course. It gives some legal rights concerning inheritance and rights if one partner becomes sick and you need power of attorney, but for a couple of 20-somethings nothing that registered cohabitation wouldn’t also provide.
People still get married. It’s a symbolic gesture, it means something to the couple and to society as a symbol of love and mutual commitment. It is just an expected step somewhere along the line.
The point, as you mention, is whatever you want the point of marriage to be.
Where I live I don’t think there is any difference between married and common-law, and even if there was most people actually get married at their city hall, with only a witness and government worker present.
The great big party that people still have is totally by choice.
I didn’t get married for the love or the religious reasons, it’s just way easier when you buy a house together. Now, if I die, all my stuff automatically belongs to my wife.
We got married on a Tuesday morning at the municipal building at 8:30 making it free. The only thing we spent money on was the rings.
That actually depends on the country. In Germany, as an example, it doesn’t automatically go to your wife - you still have to declare that in your will.
We have the option. If you get married you can get married in ‘(beperkte) gemeenschap van goederen’, which means ‘what’s mine is yours’. Caveat is that anything you owned before you got married will not be taken into account.
Then there’s ‘huwelijkse voorwaarden’ which means ‘what’s mine is mine’.
Same here, but for us, it is a common misconception that this also is for when one dies. Crazy system if you ask me because totally unintuitive.
In the Netherlands, if you don’t have a will, it all goes to the spouse.
What town is this where everybody gets free Tuesday morning weddings?
Not that I need another one, it just seems to be happening a lot in here
Do you need to pay to get married ? I don’t think we paid anything for the administrative side in France.
Most municipalities in the Netherlands have one morning per week for free marriages. Not always tuesday though.
This was Meppel but every municipality in the Netherlands has a free marriage half hour. It varies what day it is but it’ll usually be early morning.
I know there are certain legal situations where an official marriage changes who has certain rights, but aren’t those same rights available if you make other legally-official decisions E.G. a will or trusts, etc?
This is not the case. Marriage gives you a lot of specific rights that can be covered by other legal documents but never together and marriage will override it. This is one of the main goals for giving gay marriage is all of the legal benefits of marriage which are expansive and complete. (This is of course in the USA this is not the case in other locations.)
There was a few legal pushes to separate these legal benefits from marriage into different legal rights that can be granted piecemeal. If you are intersted I would read The Other Significant Others which talks about people who prioritize friendships over marriage and how they interact with their “other significant other” which includes the legal discussions.
Yeah. My buddy lived with his SO. They had kids together. I believe they did have plans to get married but there were financial/planning considerations. At the time, the house was in his name.
He died unexpectedly and without warning due to a previously unknown medical condition. I don’t believe he had a W&T.
The paperwork she had to deal with - much of which would have been not required had they been married - was horrendous, especially anything bank related. The bank also seemed to be doing their best to fuck her over in regards to the family home. It was a nasty ordeal.
The feminists don’t agree but historically marriage is there to protect the woman from having to raise a child alone. It is a socially and legally binding promise from the man that he won’t abandon her when she sacrifices her ability to fend for herself in order to bear children.
It’s the symbolism
I want to show the world that I love my woman, and I’ll do it in every way that I can
I talked about this a lot with my partner since we had been living together for a couple of years before we decided to get married.
Marriage, to us, is really just an external expression of the love that we share and the commitment we have already made to each other. The marriage itself is not the commitment, just a statement of it. There are lots of members in our families who disagree and say that marriage itself is the commitment, but then again they’re the same ones who have been divorced or who have extremely unhealthy relationships with their spouses.
Leaning on a piece of paper with your signature on it as the reason you’re staying with someone is idiotic; paper tears extremely easily. I choose to love my partner, not because a paper tells me that I chose that long ago, but because I wake up every day and make that decision.
Why get married? I dunno, if it doesn’t mean the same thing to you, then don’t, and I say that with no judgement at all. If you care more about the person than you do about the idea if marriage (like I do) and you gain nothing from a marriage, then don’t worry about it and just focus on the person, yourself, and the relationship you both share.
My partner and I are similar to you. We couldn’t care less. I proposed to her, she said yes, we’re happy with the way things are, nothing needed to change.
However. Legally speaking, when you get married, you are considered as a single legal entity in many things including court/law enforcement/taxes.
A person cannot be compelled to bear witness to their partners actions in court, in the USA, that’s the fifth amendment, in Canada, it’s section 11© of the charter of rights and freedoms. The basic concept being that you have the right to remain silent (and not incriminate yourself).
While I don’t plan on doing any crime or anything… That’s a nice perk.
Also, she hates doing her taxes, so when we’re married, I can do taxes for both of us.
There’s very few perks here and bluntly, it’s not worth the cost…
We’re going to elope and just throw a “reception” (party) afterwards.
As one who eloped and had a reception party, this this is the way. We just celebrated 18 years.
I’m getting married this summer, for my girlfriend and I it is purely practical. We own a house together, but because of how the laws are here in Denmark my mom would inherit my 50% instead of it going to my future wife in case I die. We could pay a lawyer to make a document that’ll du the same, but it’ll cost the same as the party we’re throwing instead.
Legal items aside. My wife has my back and I have hers. Having a partner in life you can trust with yours is a special thing.
It doesn’t have to even be man and woman. I know a group of older men who have a group dynamic where they are all basically each other’s partners…not sexually, just supportive.
I think the question is not questioning relationships, but asking why a marriage itself is worth anything.
You can have a lifelong partner without being married to them
Taxes. Health Insurance. Visa.
It’s not necessary for a visa in a lot of places. Canada uses common law partnership, for example. Same with health insurance.
Source; my partner and I are in a domestic partnership, not married
That really depends on your jurisdiction. There are places where domestic partners have a different status. Mostly because of the long arm of the Catholic Church.
Actually, marriage is one of the founding circumstances why we actually have laws. Although it is reasonable to assume that every marriage ritual in early societies had some kind of ‘blessed be this couple’ aspect, it originated out of civil necessity (structuring inheritance) before the Jesus Club took over and changed the meaning
Marriage makes it easier for your spouse to get their due when you pass. If you were never married it doesn’t matter how long you were together your estranged family can still relatively easily pick your corpse clean and leave nothing for the person you actually loved.
This guy knows. Of course you can get those another way, but marriage is the no questions asked route for most people.
Why do you think gay marriage is big news? Gays could always find ways around, but that’s the point, marriage is easier and you need to jump through hoops to get the same thing, it’s discriminatory and makes a difference between normal and not normal or acceptable ways of getting common ass rights and validations, absolutely useful for when you plan to spend more than a couple of years with someone.
Also, I think you confuse marriage with weddings, those are usually the expensive and stupid ones. Ceremonies are not required to be that stupid.
It doesn’t HAVE to cost so much. The wedding doesn’t cost a lot.
The ceremony and the party are what cost a lot.
But you can go down to city hall, in plain clothes, pay a small fine, fill out some paperwork, bada bing bada boom, married.
But good luck getting 99% of women to give up their dream wedding for a city hall wedding with 1 city appointed witness, and no guests.
Why the pointless sexist stereotyping?
Plenty of women don’t care about a “dream wedding”
A small fee rather than a small fine, surely?
My marriage cost about 200 Euros and all of that went into Starfleet uniforms for the two of us. Our reason for getting married was financial, but we’d been engaged for 2 decades. Just hadn’t gotten around to actually doing it, heh. Nothing’s actually changed about our relationship since then because of course, why would it, we’d been together for 22 years before saying yes. But it’s just a nice, grand gesture to proclaim to the world in uncertain terms that you intend to stay together.
I’m in the same boat. My other half has been stuck with me for nearly twenty years now and bigger and better things have come up that have needed the money spent on it.
The bit of paper will come in handy if one of us kicks the bucket though, or even when it comes to claiming certain tax allowances in the UK. I just want to make sure they’re sorted financially when I end up brown bread, and proving their connection to me is going to me one of the last things on the list in the immediate aftermath of a bereavement.
I’m not arsed one way or another about it though.
I think “no uncertain terms” is the phrase you want there.
My partner and I wanted it for legal reasons, especially since I’m disabled so he can make medical decisions etc.
We can either "register as partners’ or get married. Both cost the same. Marriage had a wedding party. Costs a lil bit more, but brought together all of our friends and had a beautiful day. So why choose boring?
Had a coworker who got married because the paperwork (or rather leak thereof) for the dad when they had kids.
For me it was a way of showing my love, a way of showing that I want to commit long term.
Yeah, when you’re married the husband will automatically be registered as the dad instead of ‘having to prove it’.
Our wedding had a double layer: we had the plan in our head for a while. Then my dad passed away and on his deathbed my now husband promised him he would take care of me like how he took care of me. So, it became incredibly emotional (6 months later) as some sort of seal on that promise too.
No, you often cannot replace the rights of marriage with other paperwork. But even if you could, does not that already answer your question? I think so…
If you want that legal framework and marriage provides it in a simple package, then maybe that’s the way to go.
Getting married doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, if a couple chooses to spend a lot on their wedding they’re doing it for that sake, but it’s not necessary.
I got married for free. In my town you can do that on Tuesday mornings. You can even bring up to 6 guests.
Did you not need a marriage license?
I got the marriage license there. It was at the building where my local/city government resides
