Casual Conversation

It will be twenty years with my husband next year.

I would love to get actually married and not just call him my husband, but he is "an adult disabled since childhood" and if he gets married he loses all his health care and ssdi and such. (Unless he marries another "adult disabled since childhood" which I'm not)

Given how the government is slowly destroying all those things, maybe we'll get married then die because we can't live without them.

To answer this, I'll need to explain the context of marriage here in Brazil. It's a bit of a mess.

First there's the "proper" civil marriage (casamento civil): the couple picks a place to celebrate, requesting the presence of a judge, scribe, and two legal witnesses. The judge leads the ceremony and bang, they're married.

There's "stable union" (união estável), a couple living together in order to form a family without making it legally official. They already enjoy most benefits and responsibilities of a legally married couple, such as succession rights, but the property system is a bit of a mess. (i.e. legally it's undefined if their property is to be considered individual, shared, or shared only if obtained after constituting a couple).

Then there's religious marriage (casamento religioso), led by the religious figure the couple chooses. On itself it holds no legal power, but if the couple submits some paperwork in a registry office (a bit before or after the ceremony), it counts legally the same as a civil marriage.

Now, actually answering the OP: I think most people here go with the stable union route (instead of actual marriage) because it's less fuss, less expensive, and they already enjoy most legal benefits of a married couple anyway. So why bother? Plus the property system only matters if they split, and almost nobody thinks in this case.

It's also possible they performed a religious marriage but didn't bother with the legal paperwork; legally speaking it ends the same deal, as a stable union.

For a long time, the taxes worked better with one Head of Household filer and one Single, that's the way you are required to file as unmarried parents, it gave us a bigger standard deduction. Benefits at work could still cover everyone.

I also didn't want to be required to stay, wanted to stay because I wanted to.

Also wasn't religious so didn't have to get married to have sex or kids.

And lastly, I just didn't really want to be a wife, there's a lot of baggage and history associated with that. And a wedding was certainly never my dream, either.

I am married now, because my husband really wanted to be married. Like, his preference was much stronger than mine. It's fine, didn't really change anything for me, we still want to be together and he & our families really, really, really enjoyed the wedding when we had it, like still talk about how nice it was. So I guess I was wrong in some ways.

When it comes to the legal definition of marriage, it doesn't just come with legal rights, it comes with legal responsibilities.

The most notable one is sharing of assets. There's a reason divorce lawyers exist, as well as the trope of messy divoerces. In the most basic scenario, divorce requires all marital assets to be split evenly, and that can be very difficult, since many assets CAN'T be split at all. You can't split a house, for example, but you're probably not interested in continuing to live together after a divorce, so who gets it? You're probably both pretty emotionally attached to it. Unless the parties can agree to one getting the house, and the other getting a bunch of other stuff to make up for it, the house will probably have to be sold, so they can split the sale price instead. And kids don't split evenly either, as you may have heard from Solomon.

In short, unless the two parties trust each other pretty thoroughly, or truly intend to stay married permanently, or are willing to retain lawers and draw up a pre-nuptual agreement to prepare for a divorce, pre-emptively, marriage carries a fair bit of personal risk.

Been there, done that, and the benefits are barely anything in the long run. Not doing it again.

Women tend to live longer and happier if they are single.

The wedding industry is an expensive mess with far too high expectations and pressure to put yourself in debt and disappointment for one party.

We have 2 kids. All property is in my name alone. I am the only one working.

This situation works out fine, as 1 since I file taxes as head of household, and she files single, we never end up owing money come tax time. If we were married, we'd have a slight tax benefit, but not really much. Also since I technically make enough money to be in the bottom of the bracket that doesn't qualify for state and federal benefits for the kids. So if we got married our kids would lose state insurance, which is good and covers everything, and instead i'd have to up my work insurance to cover my whole family, which is bad, barely covers anything, and is expensive.

The benefits of marriage are nothing, and the negatives of it are very damaging. We are barely scraping by as we are, so no marriage.

I've been with my partner for a decade. I want to get married, she doesn't. She was married for 8 years in her prior relationship. She doesn't want government involved in our love life and doesn't like the thought of being a wife or having a husband. Both of those titles come with the stigma of a power dynamic that borders on ownership to her. She tells me the main reason she got married the first time was to change her surname, which she never felt connected to (parents divorced at young age, estranged from father since then).

I assume at some point we'll be forced to be married due to some legal restriction that would be lifted by such paperwork existing.

I've been with my partner for about 15 years and we are not married. We have no plans for kids and we keep our finances separate so there wasn't much use. However, being married could be a benefit for migrating to another country.

Depending on the state, a divorce through a court isn't easy even with agreeable parties. We also move states a lot and don't want to have to do that in a state we no longer live in.

There are no benefits in it for me. Financially I make enough to stay single. Relationships take a lot of work and I’ve never felt like they added value to my life.

I feel like it would change our relationship dynamic.