What are some tangible benefits of getting married?

[dragonrage]

For those of you that are married or planning to sometime in your life time, I was wondering if you could help me out with this.

Friday at work an interesting debate took place. Is there any real tangible benefit of getting married? There are emotional and well at a certain point in any relationship it comes to that set at one point in time.

But is there anything you can physically gain from getting married under normal circumstances ( excluding marriage for status and so on....)

Some of the reasons that came up were, taxes, property claim, insurances, health benefits and a few others. But all of them were easily shot down.

In the U.S.

Taxes: If you share bank accounts, interlinking credit lines and so forth you could file anyways.

Claim of property: If you are living together for more that seven years or so you can claim the right to each other's property.

Insurances and Health Benefits can be explained under similar reasoning.

So once again can you tell me are there any tangible reasons for someone to get married?

Edit: this debate was conducted by financial analysts and their peers.... Both married and unmarried. It was just something to kill time and well it was interesting as well.

[Death BOO Z]

adopting each other's kids, in case of accident..
for all that counts.

[dragonrage]

the other person could be declared legal guardian before hand.

edit: and well even if they were married but had kids by different parental partners, the biological parents have legal right in almost all cases.

[Assassin]

im gonna say no. people dont get married for purely physical reasons, cuz marriage doesn't offer anything that you can't get otherwise in a relationship. Its purely an emotional/philosohpical/mental thing.

[dragonrage]

Well it was obvious that that is mainly the reason why get married. But the discussion was about the tangible benefits of getting married. I mean what is the differences between living together and being married.

What are the tangible things that you gain from being married that you don't have when you're living together?

edit: This discussion was debated by both married and unmarried people and well the discussion ending/ faded out, without a reason being clearly pointed out.

[el_boss]

I would say no.

[DB_Hunter]

Marriage is a societal institution that's been around for ages. Its purpose is to be a component in regulating relationships between men and women. In Islam, it's just a legal contract that outlines the responsibilities the people in the relationship have to one another plus a few other bits. That said, I don't think it would be much of a stretch to say that's what marriage for all faiths is supposed to be like.

Is there a benefit to getting married? I think they question should be, "Is there a benefit to getting married in this day and age?"

Well in the Western world not really. You can have the discussions like ones above about tax benefits etc but I don't think one of these arguments really outweighs the other. Since cohabiting without being married is an accepted norm there is no need for marriage.

It is interesting though how, in the UK anyway, there are some bits of legislation that were (maybe are, I'm not sure) being discussed as to how unmarried couples should have things such as inheritence rights and the custody of children defined under law.

Kind of ironic in my opinion that people are even considering regulating unmarried relationships after rebelling against the concept of marriage. You already have the concept of pre nuptials. Seems to be that people have simply changed religions.... That which we call a rose would by any other name still smell as sweet?

[dragonrage]

Well so far there haven't been any definitive point. But I guess there isn't any.

DB_hunter. Interesting statements. Also you should note that prenuptial agreements have expiry dates on them as well.

[gr3atfull]

Well....

Let say that there is this unmarried couple and they have a child. If the man leaves, he does not have to pay any child support. But, if they were married, he has to pay child support.

In conclusion : marriage forces the couple to be loyal to each other in a way (in my opinion). If one of the partner is disloyal and they weren't married, what can the other one do? Nothing. Marriage is a way to play it fair.

Hope that helps you.

[dragonrage]

nope, even if you aren't married you can make the other person pay child support, granted it might be harder but it is possible. Also faithfulness, loyalty, monogamy and other things like these aren't tangible nor are the guaranteed by marriage.

[Assassin]

which is exactly why i said no. There are many things that are harder to do if you're not married, but none that are completely impossible. Ofcourse, you could consider the ease with which such things can be accomplished a tangible benifit, but its kinda borderline.

[Mae]

If there are no additional benefits then why are gay couples so determined to make gay marriage legal? I'm not really familiar with this debate, but obviously they think they're missing out on something.

[dragonrage]

lol

Off-topic.

Mae, In their case it is about Equal rights and well establishing themselves legally and in other aspects of society.

[yallo]

Maybe it's just due to the unique laws in Singapore, but there actually seems to be quite a lot of benefits to be married here.

1) You cannot buy a brand new flat/apartment (i.e. public housing) if you are not married or about to get married (you have to produce your marriage cert within 3 months of purchase). Only exceptions are if you are sharing the house with your parents/siblings. You can only purchase an old flat on the resale market if you are single. And even then, you have to be 35 years old or older to be eligible for that.

2) Married couples get an extra "grant" from the government (worth $40,000) to offset the cost of the flat if they stay within 2km of their parents. If you are single and buy a flat just next door to your parents, sorry dude, no grant given.

3) If you are married and have kids, the children are eligible to recieve a one-off "Baby Bonus" from the government (basically cash gifts in the range of $3000 to $6000 per kid). I believe the parents have to be legally married for the baby to be eligible.

Eh hopefully none of the information is wrong here.... any comments, Psyke? Since you are married and should know much more details than me...

[Assertn]

Women can't divorce guys and take all their money if they don't get married =/

[DB_Hunter]

lol @ Assertn... It could be the other way round in the case of the now divorced Mrs Roman Abramovich!

Different goverments would have different views on marriage. That's why I don't support the taxes/grants/free money theory... if that's why you are getting married then you might be in a for a nasty shock if a new government comes in to power and changes the policies of the previous one.

You can't view marriage in isolation. Marriage is part of a social system of regulating relationships between men and women. It will only work in a society where extra-marital sex, unmarried cohabiting couples etc are not allowed. Marriage helps to establish roles and responsibilities in the relationship and as an institution in wider society also. Its the antithesis of freedom and contradicts this concept.

You can't have a society believing in sexual freedom and at the same time expect marriage to work. If you don't do things like forbid adultry and fornication then marriage loses its value. You could of course always get married in such a society, but it is merely a token gesture if you hold on to the aforementioned values.

Who needs to get married if you can just grab a gf/bf?

[dragonrage]

Women can't divorce guys and take all their money if they don't get married =/

lol, I am asking for a tangible reason to get married. And well even if your aren't married that isn't the case. You might still end up giving up something if you;re together long enough.

But, again i am looking for a tangible reason for getting married. The intent of the discussion wasn't to the swindle something out of your partner.

[Yukimura]

Traditionally the tangible benefits of marriage were for men:

You got someone to clean your stuff, take care of your household, and maybe even have sex with from time to time, from this you got socially legitamate heirs you could pass on your land and holdings to upon your death.

For women: You got a place to live that wasn't your parents house...since women (middle & high class) couldn't really hold property and weren't supposed to be doing work, If they didn't have husband's and dad died they were usually in trouble.

In the present American culture there's not really any tangible reason other than tax breaks and more reasonable child custody arrangements. An unmarried parent can in many cases can effectivly ban the other parent from seeing the child, while still extracting child support from them. Obviously if you love your kids you may want to be married to their other parent to make it harder from them to be taken from you.

Finally, though it's not directly tangible, social stigmas can cause tangible effects on one's life, like yalloz comments about Singapore laws. If it's seen as taboo to be unmarried then you may find life more difficult than if you were married.

[KitKat]

dragonrage, I think the way you have phrased this question is vague. How are you defining tangible? Are you only looking for material benefits that you can physically see? If so, the only real benefits would be monetary as people have pointed out before. This is a fairly culture-dependent question, as different societies have different laws regarding marriage.

Mae, In their case it is about Equal rights and well establishing themselves legally and in other aspects of society.

How is this off-topic? Your original question didn't specify heterosexual or homosexual marriage. Wouldn't this be the ideal debate to look at if you wanted to see what benefits being defined as 'married' gives a couple?

[XanBcoo]

If there are no additional benefits then why are gay couples so determined to make gay marriage legal? I'm not really familiar with this debate, but obviously they think they're missing out on something.

Heh, it's possible you just nailed the topic the guy starting the original discussion was trying to get at.

Personally, I've always seen Marriage as a matter of personal preference, and (as concluded so far in this thread) something not completely neccessary.

You can't have a society believing in sexual freedom and at the same time expect marriage to work. If you don't do things like forbid adultry and fornication then marriage loses its value.

The divorce rate in the U.S. at the moment (~50%) says you're right, but I think it's possible for a couple to believe in "sexual freedom" while they're single and still desire to eventually be devoted to a single partner (in a set-in-stone relationship). There are also married "swinger" couples who embrace each extreme . If there really are no monetary benefits, then clearly marriage can serve many other purposes.