Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

Anecdotally, among the people I know in Seattle, many people who have happily been in the same relationship for decades are not married. People are not avoiding long-term relationships, they are avoiding the baggage and fairly rigid assumptions that comes with state intervention in their relationships. There is zero social pressure to be “officially” married so people have no reason to do it for the sake of social conformity. Both men and women are subscribing to this.

I think some of this is a side-effect of many people planning to never have children.

As someone who was married and is now divorced, I can absolutely see the draw. I don’t think of it as “state intervention in relationships,” as I’m not a libertarian, but aside from tax breaks, which mean absolutely nothing when I have to pay for my ex-wife to live carefree for the rest of her life simply because we were married and she was lazy, doesn’t offset the 19 years of tax offsets she squandered.

Agreed with this point. Folks are moving away from traditional relationship structures, and have been for a while.

If you want a personal anecdote - I'm partnered, not married, we don't plan to have kids or marry, and worry pretty much 0 about retirement or having enough funds to pass on to another generation. We're just enjoying our lives for however long that may be.

One thing to be mindful of is that this limits your ability to help your partner as you age. State intervention can play both ways.

That’s unfortunate. And it’s a uniquely American mindset. Long-term relationships in Europe for example do not require marriage in the same way that Americans do. People get married in the states because of the law, people get married in other countries because they just want to get married for emotional or spiritual reasons.

It’s actually the opposite. A lot of benefits programs are punitive to marriage wrt household income. I know many older couples who stay unmarried because one of them would lose their healthcare or cash transfer benefit, for example.

For making healthcare decisions, durable power attorney and a medical proxy should be sufficient for unmarried couples. Not an attorney, talk to one if this is a need you have to validate your authority posture. The best time to have a plan is before you need it.

> People get married in the states because of the law

That's at least vastly overstated, and probably just false. I'm an American living in a major urban center and I don't think I know anybody for whom the decision to get married was influenced by legal considerations to any significant degree.

Really unfortunate for some.

I enjoyed my wedding. We invited family with the goal to celebrate together and we made sure our guests enjoyed it.

I have seen plenty of our wedding pictures hanging on walls (from them in it, not us).

I also can't tell you how interesting it feels that we share now the same last name.

I think it's a nice progression for a relationship.

Just get someone a Power Of Attorney, while the spouse gets a few more rights the POA is literally acting as You.

I cannot think of anyone here in the United States who got married for legal benefits, other than some couples working on citizenship issues for one partner without citizenship.

I think your Americans-vs-Europeans argument is greatly exaggerated if not outright false.

Not really. It’s just more paperwork to sign as far as power of attorney, being explicit about beneficiaries, etc.

I have been married for 15 years though and I’m 50 and my wife is 49

Raises hand.

I got engaged to my wife with the expectation of us getting married 6 months later. We pulled our marriage forward 6 months because I got laid off from my job and needed to get on her insurance. I had a contract literally the next week after getting laid off and could have paid for COBRA out of pocket. But it was her idea to go to the courthouse

I do know a fair number of people who got married for health insurance (not really legal reasons, but maybe adjacent?).

Though very few of those cases we’re people who otherwise would not have gotten married, rather people who got a legal marriage very quickly to access health, benefits then took the normal amount of time for the ceremonial wedding

What is US law on this and what are the "rigid assumptions" people find troublesome.

In the UK the main effect of marriage is that it protects the lower earning partner if the relationship breaks down - most often (even now!) this is a woman who gives up work/takes a break from work to bring up kids. I come across a good many single mothers (mostly online because of an FB group I admin) who would have been MUCH better off financially if they had been married, and a lot who are a lot better off because they were married.

Historically the main reason for legal marriage was to protect women from being left with kids by feckless men who evaded responsibility. Its a bit less pressing now we have paternity tests (and contraceptives) but its still a problem, and whoever gives up career for childcare still loses out without marriage.

As I said in another comment this leads to many people being disadvantaged.

I do not know where you live, and these laws vary between countries, but in the UK marriage gives you a lot of important legal rights. Not marring disadvantages a lower earning partner (most often a woman who has taken time off a career to look after kids) if the relationship breaks down, it does not give you the same legal rights if one dies with regard to inheritance (no real rights if there is no will, far less right to contest a will, and the loss of a significant inheritance tax exemption even if there is), or being automatically next of kin (I think this has improved in practice), no automatic joint parental responsibility for children, etc.

> For making healthcare decisions, durable power attorney and a medical proxy should be sufficient for unmarried couples.

Should be isn't is. PoA aren't trivially recognized in the way a marriage is. If you have to interact with more than a couple of services you ought to expect friction.

A local medical provider might not be familiar with a PoA but that can be worked out. However, bureaucracies like insurance providers can be staffed with people whose trainings never mentioned PoA but did extensively cover HIPAA compliance (and penalties).

In caring for my spouse, there were times that I needed all of the above: spousehood + PoA + verbal auth from spouse.

source: legal assistant, probate

source: 25yr as caregiver for disabled spouse (+PoA)

I can understand that. My ex wife is currently after money from me after years of refusing to work (even when we really needed the money) - and I did more than half the work in looking after our kids too. Just to explain, divorce, child arrangements, and divorce finance are separate cases here.

We do not have tax breaks for being married here in the UK. There is one tiny advantage if one person does not have a taxable income, but is pretty small.

On the other hand I also (as I said in other comments) know women (and it is still almost entirely women) who have not got a fair deal financial because they were not married, but gave up work to look after the kids/be a home maker. That is just as unfair.

I did 25yr administering my spouse's medical care. Being the spouse routinely greased skids that our PoA would not have.

I saw medical proxy mentioned above. I ran into those routinely but they were always supplied by the service provider. When they showed up it was good news; it meant I would have full discretion with that provider.

There is minimal US law on this. States have their own laws individually which vary considerably. The context here has nothing to do with children and these people commonly don’t have any. Legal jurisdiction can be quite fluid, which just adds to the complexity.

A major motivating factor is that marriage can create myriad ruinous financial entanglements and eliminate most possibilities for recourse. Especially in affluent places like Seattle, people are often entering these relationships with a mature financial and business life. The loss of independence under law, both technically and in practice, in regard to these affairs in marriage has produced countless examples of bad outcomes for people, often forcing them to start over from zero in their 30s or 40s. It doesn’t matter if you divorce later, the damage is already done. By not getting married, they retain independence in these matters recognized by law which shields them from the downside scenarios.

These cases are mostly about retaining the ability to continue to run their businesses, investments, etc as they wish both in marriage and after. States in the western US are notoriously much less accommodating of protecting the interests of individuals in marriage than in some other parts of the country (purportedly due to the strong influence of Spanish legal customs in that region of North America). The forced loss of agency is not compatible with many requirements of competently living a modern life.

I probably know more women who were ruined by this in marriage than men. It has nothing to do with staying home or quitting a career to raise kids.

Married filing jointly, tax benefits. My sibling did it.

Also, health insurance. Another thing Americans have yet to learn from Europe. In the states, sometimes you have to get married just to get health insurance. It’s kind of ridiculous.

Tax benefits. Married, filing jointly. Happens a lot, including to people within my family.

Also, health insurance. Another thing Americans have yet to learn from Europe. In the states, sometimes you have to get married just to get health insurance. It’s kind of ridiculous.

I just did a search of all the different legal benefits, and financial benefits, you get in the United States if you’re married. It’s quite a vast list.

Just google all of the legal and financial benefits that you get in the United States when you get married.

I do not really understand that. Why would people have to start again from zero? What sort of "forced loss of agency" happens? Are there laws allowing people to stop their spouse from running an existing business?

FWIW, it has become increasingly common in the US (or at least the parts I’ve lived in) to allow adding an informal domestic partner to your health insurance, no marriage required. IIRC, there is a tax quirk if you do it but I haven’t done it in many years.

It comes from an ancient legal regime called “community property” inherited from the Spanish in the southwestern US. The details of what is within legal scope and how it is handled varies significantly with jurisdiction. In most cases the loss of ownership independence also comes with a loss of management independence — your spouse can get involved and has veto power. Assets that are out of scope can bleed into scope over time. The entire notion interacts poorly with modern legal and financial structures related to businesses and assets.

It isn’t talked about much but I’ve seen a couple startups destroyed by this and it is a not uncommon source of dead equity in cap tables.

I can only recommend having an attorney you can call who will threaten those who won’t respect the legal authority of the documents. People are always the weakest link unfortunately.

Lawyer. Passport. Locksmith. Gun. (A Talk About Risk and Preparedness) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33509164

(I hold POA and medical proxies for people who need someone they can trust to assert their medical decisions and wishes for them when they are unable to)

I'm pretty sure that people here in the US get married for emotional and spiritual reasons far more than they do for legal reasons.

While I do get your point, marriage is so deeply ingrained into the legal and financial systems of the U.S. that I think many can't help but subconsciously attach these things that really should be independent.

Marriage unlocks a wide range of legal and financial benefits: access to a spouse’s health insurance, favorable tax treatment (like joint filing and estate tax breaks), and legal protections such as hospital visitation rights, inheritance without a will, and immigration sponsorship. It also affects Social Security, parental rights, and eligibility for things like pensions and veterans’ benefits. I mean, if you get married, in the States stuff is just all worked out automatically.

In many other countries, marriage is not attached to these things.

My employer is of course just one and not representative of every company. But my work/indurance is happy to accept long term domestic partner in lieu of marriage. As long as you swear to be in a long term committed relationship and live together, it's fine.

> In many other countries, marriage is not attached to these things.

Care to name one?

What you described is basically how marriage works in my corner of Europe.

The entire legal system is essentially based on interpersonal credibility.

I'm not ignorant of the legal incentives in the U.S. and I'm not saying people never marry for those reasons. But the post I was responding to was making a much stronger generalization. Most people who marry in the U.S. also do it for "emotional or spiritual reasons."

If owners were concerned, why wasn't there a prenupt?

Do you have details on what you're talking about?

Because you're coming across with talk radio / TikTok vibes.

There are benefits if you have different income levels but penalties in the low and the high end. Very high penalties on the low end

The legal incentives are quite large, but the financial ones are much less impressive unless you have a stay-at-home spouse.

Depending on state that will be thrown out.

> Because you're coming across with talk radio / TikTok vibes.

Really? That’s what you’ve got?

I’ve seen examples of this in Silicon Valley going back to the 1990s. A prenup is not reliable and loads of people don’t have one in any case. Unlike not getting married, there is significant social pressure against prenups. If you actually care the path of least resistance is to not get married. It is quite difficult to get a prenup against the possibility that someone will prove to be irresponsible or malicious in the future in a context they’ve never experienced thus far.

It also doesn’t address the case that if you start a company while married, your spouse effectively has full license to destroy it even if they were completely uninvolved up until the point where they decide to destroy it. I’ve seen it happen, lots of collateral damage for both employees and investors. People will do it out of spite. How do you write a prenup about a company that doesn’t exist yet and may never exist?

Anything that can happen legally generally happens in practice. Average people even in tech don’t hire a team of lawyers when they decide to get married.

If you’ve chosen to get your information from talk radio and TikTok as you seem to suggest, well, that’s a choice.

That opens up an entirely different discussion, which is why should health insurance be tied to a job? This is also uniquely American. Is your home insurance tied to your job? Is your car insurance tied to your job? Is your life insurance? Doesn’t make sense that your health insurance should be. What happens if you get laid off or you decide you don’t want to work for this company any more or you want to take another opportunity? Now your health insurance or your health insurance costs might both change. And you might have to go through the same hoops again to get a domestic partner installed, etc.

Thanks for the explanation. I have heard of the concept of community property, but did not know where it came from historically. I also did not realise it had this effect - which makes sense now you explain it.

I do not think this is the explains of the decline in marriage though. AFAIK marriage has declined across the west - other US states, and certainly in many European countries.

People marry expecting to cooperate so I find it hard to believe this is a common reason not to marry on any case. The idea behind community of property must have been that the expectation of a marriage is that it will endure for life and the spouses are committed to each others' best interests. That is how it is supposed to work!

I think (and everything points to it being the cause here in the UK) is that without the social pressure to marry in order to co-habit people think of marriage as just a ceremony (on which they spend ridiculous amounts) and a piece of paper. They do not realise the legal benefits of marriage. In fact, many people assume that if they co-habit long term and have kids the law must be fair enough to give them reasonable rights, and some even think we have common law marriage here. It leads to distressing results when relationships break down, or a partner dies (especially without a will, or when a will is contested).

I meant you sound like rants on talk radio and TikTok.

If you cited more examples and laws, and relied less on drawn out appeals to emotion, I'd be more inclined to take what you're saying seriously.

> People are not avoiding long-term relationships, they are avoiding the baggage and fairly rigid assumptions that comes with state intervention in their relationships.

Unfortunately, avoiding paper marriage is insufficient to avoid such intervention in the state of Washington (with its Committed Intimate Relationship doctrine) or states where a cohabitant may be legally entitled to "palimony".

In some European countries, for example, many of these protections are granted by physically living together, not by getting married.

Washington has "committed intimate relationship" which does confer community property and is similar to a "common law marriage" so if people think that being in a long term relationship and not getting married is a way to "protect their property" then that's a fallacy.