Is getting married still worth it nowadays?

Worth it if you have 300 or more guests and you make money on the wedding gifts.

Depends on whether you attach any value to giving and receiving the formal, public commitments involved. If you do then obviously, yeah, marriage has a point.

If you don't, it may still have a point as a way of accessing adminstrative treatment appropriate to a committed, exclusive, conjugal couple — joint tax assessment, automatic inheritance rights, etc. Some of these you can replicate by, e.g., making a will in appropriate terms; others, like joint assessment, are not replicable. But marriage provides a convenient way of accessing the entire package, if that's what you want.

The huge expense is optional. I am married. Good for inheritance, tax credits, bereavement leave, automatic guardianship of any children etc. I would day that it is worth it, just choose well if possible parthner wise.

Im just going to though my twopence worth in here cause I've been thinking about this. To me marriage still means something. Alright, people don't see it as the committment they used to but I do. I don't however feel the need for a huge wedding and certainly not a gift list, the thought of giving someone a gift list makes me wanna boke. I do know someone who invited everyone they could think of, hoping they wouldn't all come just to get a gift from them and ended up being able to pay half his mortgage off and get a honeymoon out of it. But for me, it means that someone is committing themselves to me. But that's just me....

So marriage may be worth it, but the religious ceremonies and ghastly expensive weddings are not.

The OP's question, though, is about marriage, not about weddings.

Weddings may be worth discussing, but it's a whole different discussion that deserves a whole different thread (or even a whole different forum).

The wedding is the easy/irrelevant/fluffy part of getting married. It's the tip of the iceberg..😀

I can only comment on my experience of marriage and that is the wedding part because I'm not married. But for a lot of people, who ultimately end up divorced, the wedding part is super important. And imo, sets up potentially what the marriage will be like. At nearly every wedding there's at least one part where the future is conversed between drunken attendees. One can usually guess which marriages last by the wedding. The more lavish, the less chance of it lasting is my personal experience.

But aasa single male, from what my married friends say, it's worth it for the tax... benefits?

If buying a property with your partner, things can get very messy if one brings a greater share of the deposit than the other - anything more than a 3k differential will potentially attract a capital gains charge on the beneficiary (the smaller contributor). It may be possible to address this with an appropriate contract (joint tenants? tenants in common?) but a solicitor will advise

The only real benefits are artificial tbh: preferential tax treatment, simplified inheritance/guardianship of children etc. Nothing that a government couldn't remove at the stroke of a pen.

The risks are enormous for the higher earner/wealthier spouse, though the government have already inflicted some of this same risk on co-habiting couples. That said, I don't believe the levels of alimony are quite the same in such cases.

Divorce isn't much of a risk if you're both penniless, both earn similar levels of income or if the higher earner is absolutely coining it but if you're the higher earner by any significant amount, our no-fault divorce system puts you at high risk. There's nothing stopping a vindictive spouse from having an affair, quitting their job and expecting their now ex to support them financially for the rest of their lives.

Add kids to the mix and if you're the main breadwinner, you better hope you're in a financial position to cover two mortgages or you'll likely find yourself homeless or, if you're lucky, back living in a flat share at an age beyond what most would find acceptable.

Marriage is merely the formal acknowledgement of a deep connection.

I wouldn't recommend it if there's any doubts.

I did warn my partner that I'd never get married in a religious setting, so thankfully just the two of us went abroad and staged some fake church pics for those relatives for who such things are crucial.

My siblings thanked me for not dragging them through the expense of the usual Irish wedding.

68 guests. No church. 3600 euro bill for the LOT.

Happily married 9 years

Would be a mess for all the reasons above (kids, the law, tax, etc) to not be wed.

Is that still the case?

I got married in towards the tail end of COVID. We had a traditional church wedding, hotel reception afterwards. 60 guests or so, relatively small. Cards covered about 80% of costs I’d say. Made zero difference to our daily lives but it’s what we both wanted.

Did you not have life insurance on your mortgage? I thought it was compulsory.

I have no mortgage now, but on the whole I'd rather have my wife back.

There's a theory that a lot of marriages don't work out because way back in the day it was purely to procreate and we were dead within 5 years of the marriage hence why a lot of people stray because we're not designed to be loyal to one person.

Potential suicide (drowning) so insurance say that if they 'deem it likely' to have been self inflicted they will not pay out. Waiting for inquest and then the fight begins.

Can I just clear up the whole automatic guardianship thing. If you are not married but are living together for at least 12 months in a row (3 months after the birth) then the father automatically has guardianship rights. Yes these are also granted upon marriage as well but it doesn't affect it if you've been living together.

As for me - I think marriage is worth it if you're doing it for the right reasons, the actual marriage & not some big party. A wedding and a marriage are two very different things.

i worked for one employer who was massively prejudiced against non married staff. Holidays, shifts, training courses, sick leave etc…. All first preference and first option was given to married people or people with families of which 99% of those were married in that job. This was regardless of their seniority.

Funny how it’s extremely incendiary / illegal to discriminate against people, based on sexuality, gender, race / nationality, disability etc……. But hey, a person who is single and or childless, it’s completely acceptable in some circles like employment to basically throw them and their rights / entitlements away when it suits some other parties, especially married people…. So I’d say based on what I witnessed and experienced it’s probably worth it yeah.. 😅

None of the married gang minded one bit of course. 🤪

Funny I've been thinking about this myself. I'm in a LTR, no kids and we are hoping to buy a house in the new year. We rent currently. I have concerns about what the implications are if we have a house and one of us dies, does the other have to pay tax on the inheritance. We don't intend to have children so the father's rights bit is moot but I kind of like the idea of her being my next of kin in the event of something happening and vice versa.

If unmarried couples had the same rights as married couples, then the unmarried couples would have the exact same problems when they break up. It would be divorce by another name.

Off topic, but for the record discrimination on the grounds of marital or family status is unlawful.

No, it's because she has a womb, and carried the kids for nine months.

Proper order, too, because she has bonded to the kids during those nine months in a way that's not possible for a person- with-a-penis.

Very sad society we live in if two people can't make these commitments work. Especially if there is kids involved.