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.

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.

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.

> 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 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)