/u/Traditional-Ad7717 on What's your view on marriage? How has it changed with time?

I believe in marriage in the sense that if two people love eachother, and want legal rights to each others assets, they can and should get married. I also believe when having children, it’s better to be married in the sense that the child has two legal guardians and a stable family structure. I’m not religious, but I can also understand marriage in the religious sense.

That being said, I believe legal marriage is a system that is being severely abused and needs to be revamped. I am a firm believer that if someone decided to get married, it’s a contract for life, and divorce should be considered a last resort, except in the cases of abuse. So many people use the system of marriage to gain citizenship or tax benefits when they don’t deserve it (I understand a lot of people use the citizenship and tax benefits to pull themselves out of a bad situation, and I can sympathize with them, but see it as an issue with the immigration and tax system that needs to be addressed. Marriage here is only a ‘legal fix’ in these circumstances, and taken advantage of by not so innocent individuals).

Personally, I would much rather be in a committed relationship, or possibly a domestic partnership, than being married. The only benefit I see are taxes, medical insurance and legal rights. I believe domestic partnership can cover medical insurance and legal rights depending on the state you reside in. As for taxes, I don’t think the government should be encouraging marriage in the form of monetary benefits.

Marriage has its downsides as well, and a lot of people get screwed over financially/emotionally when getting divorced because of their partners financial/emotional issues. I personally don’t believe in commingling finances or at least putting shared assets in a trust that slit ownership clearly based on amount paid for by each person, or equal ownership (50/50). If anything happens, trust owns the physical asset, and the proceeds are split accordingly.

As for the emotional side, I don’t think most people can handle being in close contact for long periods of time, and solely base their relationship around activities and sex, rather than comparability with their partner in an emotional sense. Too many people are jaded by false social constructs that rich and famous is equal to kind and empathetic.

All in all, I believe relationships should be tested for longer periods of time to determine compatability before marriage, even though the idea of marriage is not something I would pursue myself.

Sorry if this was extremely long, I kinda went on a tangent here, hopefully it’s coherent and makes sense.

March 21, 2021 at 11:56PM