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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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