Is Marriage for Money Short-Sighted?

Bluetinfoilhat · 1日前

You marry for hospital, funeral, pension, and custody issues. If you don't care about this, then don't bother getting married.

Also if you live together, there isn't much different from a feminist perspective than if you marry.

shamelesslyfeminist · 23時間前

I married for a greencard and money. 18 years later and no regrets. Money doesn't buy happiness, but poverty sure the fuck doesn't either. I've done both. My mother married a poor man for love. Love fades. Especially when he is chronically unemployed, drunken philanderer as most men from my country end up being.

I love my husband. He's a great husband. But he's still a man. If a woman is gonna put up with all the bullshit that having a man entails, she should benefit. I've never cohabited with a man. Personally, I don't see any benefit for a woman by living with a man, cleaning up after him, having sex with him, or having his children without any entitlements or protections. But then I come from a different culture and experienced a level of poverty most western women don't.

That being said, you should always have an exit plan. Always have money squirreled away and a way of making a living for yourself and your children should it come down to it.

heidischallenge · 1日前

Divorce laws vary by state but you would have to dissolve the union equitably unless you have a pre-nuptial agreement.

georgiaokeefesgrotto · 1日前

Always have a separate bank account.

Personally, I have found living together to be better for me, but neither me nor my mates have had money. Unless you plan on having children, or he is going to share his property with you fully on the books would it be worth it, IMO.

My DH and I married for insurance reasons a few years ago when I had it through a job. The job's no longer, but marriage has fucked up our taxes for three years running now.

deirdreofthegaians · 22時間前

If you live with this man, you now have NO rights if/when he decides to split and leave you with nothing. There will be no equitable arrangement decided by the courts. There will be you, without funds for a lawyer, begging to be let inside to grab a few of the possessions most precious to you.

If you are married, he is legally forbidden from hiding assets in a divorce proceeding and your marital assets will be divided equally.

Your foremothers fought long and hard for equitable, no-fault divorce. It is now the right afforded by marriage that is the single best thing for women already cohabiting with male partners.

I have been divorced twice, once from a marriage made in large part due to financial reasons. I am beyond glad that I did not simply cohabit.

Fray38 · 1日前

Short answer: no, it's not short sighted, it's practical.

Long answer:

I don't know if this would necessarily qualify as The RadFem viewpoint, in fact I'm pretty sure it doesn't, but this is my own feeling on the matter which has changed a lot over the years as any theoretical stance I may have had was battered away by real world experiences.

A large part of the entire point of marriage is shoring up financial and social stability. The whole idea of marriage being primarily, or only, about love is a relatively new concept, and I think a fairly short sighted one that overlooks the other material realities of life. By forming a legal and social contract between the two of you (and also between your families, in some places), it enables you to more easily function as a team and provides motivation to think and act for your mutual benefit. I understand the political arguments about why it shouldn't be mandatory and why people shouldn't be stigmatized if they don't marry, and I agree that if it's not what you want then you shouldn't do it, but it's still a fact that has been shown over and over again that marriages are, on the whole, more stable than other types of relationships and really do produce psychological and behavioral benefits and I don't think it's unreasonable to want that.

This is one of the major reasons why legalizing gay marriage was so dang important!

You need to really think about what you want from the relationship and what your plans are for the future and decide if marriage supports that. If the financial benefits, sense of permanence, and ease of operating as a unit rather than as two individuals trying to coordinate with each other appeals to you, then marriage is probably for you and there's nothing wrong with that. If the permanence would make you feel trapped, you more greatly value the ability to coordinate with your partner on some aspects of life you're interested in but not on others, you are unsure if you can rely on your partner to uphold his end of the bargain, or if you could picture yourself leaving your partner in the foreseeable future, then maybe it's not for you.

Also, and my younger self hates me for saying this, but if you're planning to have children, that should be a significant check mark in the "pro" column for marriage. Studies have shown time and again that the best family arrangement for positive childhood development is biological parents who are married (or primary partners at the time of the child's birth, for gay families), with biological parents/primary partners who are unmarried but still together coming second. The biggest risk factor for the death, physical or sexual abuse, or neglect of a child is the presence of an unrelated adult in the home (i.e. the parent's new boyfriend, a step parent, etc). I feel like if you bring a child into the world (and this applies to both men and women equally) then you have a responsibility to act in that child's best interests as much as you can, even if you personally would prefer something else for yourself. This isn't about being an all-sacrificing pure Mommy who subsumes her entire identity in her child, it's about acknowledging the responsibility you have to that child and society in general to form that new person as best you can, even if you'd prefer other priorities.

Don't get me wrong, I am in no way disparaging single parents or blended families. I myself am the product of a wonderful single mother and a crappy-then-vanished father, and I have a pretty great step dad, and I like to think I turned out okay. But there's no denying that all of our lives would have been easier and happier and I would have had way more opportunities in life if my mom had had a reliable and supportive partner for a husband instead of... what she actually had.

Wow, I hadn't planned to write that much! So this concludes "Fray's Marriage and Child Manifesto What's Probably Going to Make Her an Outcast." Tune in next time for a 5000 word screed entitled "Why Leggings Are Not Pants, God Damn It!"

Abc1938 · 1日前

Can you elaborate as to why you had been planning to avoid marriage?

city-licker · 21時間前

So, what I'm hearing is that getting married is going to cost you money and save him a ton. Add that with the fact that married women fair way worse than single women and I just don't see why you would.

annieareyouokayannie · 20時間前

I got married for pragmatic reasons. $11k a year probs would've done it for me. How hard is it to get a divorce where you are?

thatMarciawoman · 23時間前

I'm in the UK and have friends who, having been together for years and with two children by that time, got married. They did so for pension reasons. I think a large factor in their decision was that my friend had a serious postpartum haemorrhage after their second child, and that got them thinking about what would happen if one of them died and was left to bring up two small children on their own. A friend of theirs found himself in exactly that sad situation when his wife died, and that probably also played into their thinking. Since their marriage, the law has changed and they would benefit from each other's pension without being married. When the woman told me that, I said "oh, well, you can get divorced now!" and she said that she'd said the same thing to her husband and he'd been a bit put out! But she was annoyed that the law had changed so soon after they'd married as they wouldn't have married otherwise.

bisoubisoumathmath · 21時間前

Does he have any debt or liabilities? You should look at his financial history before attaching yourself by law, I think.

endoftheliner · 11時間前

I think you've already made up your mind about this.

Marriage is, though, I think, a barrier to becoming a fully independent person which you'll never experience except on your own.

Women no longer have to jump from a bed perhaps shared with a sibling in their parents' house to a shared bed in marriage. That was my life before an early divorce at age 21 when I never had slept alone in my entire life. Now, I've been enjoying that pleasure for 55 yrs.

You don't say how old you, or the relationship is, but trust me: People change and laws don't keep up with those changes. "I put most of my income into my pre-tax retirement plan, plus some savings for a house or whatever I may want in the future. " I think I'd be prone to keeping it that way. You can walk away from a relationship that involves no legal restrictions, but marriage is an entirely different animal.

StrawberryPyrex · 1日前

It worries me that he pays "all of [your] expenses." That is letting a man support you 100% and could end very badly. There's no resentment from him that he's supporting another adult who gets to sock all her own money away into "savings" while contributing nothing to the day-to-day expenses? He's a rare one, then.

I'm actually a little bit against matches like this, whether legal marriage comes into it or not, where the partners are so financially mismatched. It just seems to be not a basis for an equitable relationship. Maybe that's a topic for a different post though.

In your case, I guess getting married would lead to a better outcome for both of you. Get a pre-nup though. I will NEVER get married again without a pre-nup.

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