Marriage Contract

[Fishface]

Is it mad for a man to get married? or am I lacking some understanding?

For example - if the woman has an affair and 'breaks' the contract and you want a divorce, does she still get half?

If she wants a divorce cos she got bored, does she still get half?

If you both own property prior to the marriage, does she get half of yours and keep hers?

If I have a million in the bank and then sign the register of marriages does that mean half of it has effectively gone?

If she is wealthy and I am poor, does she get half of my poverty?

If I have a massive mortgage, we divorce, does she get half the debt?

I know about commercial contracts but the 'marriage contract' seems to be utterly stupid thing to do - where is the benefit?

Has anyone been asked for their marriage contract/license/whatever - prove you are married?

If I stuck a gold ring on my girlfriends finger would anyone else know if we were or were not married?

Can you get done for marriage fraud? as in pretending to be married - impersonating a married man, wearing a gold ring on specified finger.

I mean, unless you need a residency visa, whats the point?

If anyone says 'love' then please monetize it in terms of a settlement.

[Troll]

Only reason to get married is to legitimise having kids
HTH

[dang65]

There are still legal and tax implications to being married which can't be duplicated in any other way (by using an agreement signed by a solicitor for example). Married couples are excluded from Inheritance Tax and Capital Gains Tax. So if one half of an unmarried couple dies and they had been living together for 30 years and had bought and rennovated a house together, the surviving partner would have to pay Inheritance Tax on the dead partner's estate, which includes everything they owned - including the house. Especially tough if the house was only in the name of the partner that died.

And it's 40% the moment you get over the IHT threshold (£285,000 at the moment I think).

So if the 'jointly owned' house was in the name of the dead partner and it was worth £485,000 (not unusual these days), then the surviving partner would be liable for £80,000 in tax just for the house, even if they'd always chipped in equally towards it and done all the decorating etc. And that bill has to be paid up front before anything else is dealt with to do with the estate!

If they were married - no tax liability at all on death.

Don't know if there's any plans for the law to change, but at the moment being married still carries financial weight even after things like Married Couples Tax Allowances and Mortgage Interest Relief At Source have disappeared (n.b. not been opened up to everyone, just removed from married people - to make things fair).

[The Lone Gunman]

If you need to consider such things then you should not get married.