Marriages aren't supposed to end except in death. It's right there in the vows. They are a serious commitment, and I think many take them lightly without realizing that they are intended to be lifelong.
I think it’s not so much people take it lightly, as that they have no idea of what they are getting into and what kind of work a modern marriage involves.
It would be useful for me that I have some way to assign certain rights relating to me, to someone else.
I am not married, but I have been living with someone for 12 years, and neither of us has plans to change.
But legally, I don't know what happens when one of us meets a misfortune and the other needs to speak for us. Luckily in our case, we both have plenty of other blood relatives all alive and reachable and all on good terms with each other.
So, if say I am incapacitated, and some functionary at a hospital won't accept my partners decision about what to do, both my partner and the functionary can reach several other generally accepted proxies in the form of my mother, my brother, and even more cousins. My partner will be able to say what to do only slightly indirectly if not directly.
And we both have our own jobs with insurance and retirement savings so neither of us really needs to be legally acknowledged to receive benefits like military death benefits or retirements etc.
So for us we can pretty much get away with having NOT addressed these issues.
But they are real issues that generally should be addressed. A legal document on the books would provide a clean path to resolve a lot of potentially messy situations. What if our families didn't all like or respect each other? What if one or both of us had no known and/or reachable bood relatives? What if one of us actually needed to be recognized as a claimant on the others insurance or retirement or property like a house?
Probably a lot of such things could just as well be handled with legal documents other than marriages. Like if I take a job that has spouse insurance benefits, that could just as well be whoever I want to write on that form, rather than having it be determined by my marriage document.
But it would still be useful to have a catch-all document that expresses my wishes in any situation not handled elsewhere.
Simple counterexample: the USSR's views on gay marriage.
Says who? Every country I've lived in has provisions for ending marriages, so clearly it's not the only path.
>It's right there in the vows.
What vows? Nobody in my family is religious, none of us made any claims about being together until death. And even then, lots of religions allow for divorce, even some sects of Christianity...
In many cultures people make wedding vows about staying married until one of you dies.
I think the distinction should be socio-cultural: if you don’t accept that this civil union is “till death do us part”, then by definition it shouldn’t be marriage - it’s a civil union. All the same benefits of marriage with none of the cultural components.
It's not my responsibility to advertise my belief system to you.
The state shouldn't be in the business of certifying christenings or bar mitzvahs, nor should it be in the business of marriage for the same exact reasons.
> Nobody in my family is religious
point is out of place (because whether the family is religious seems to have little relevance)
I am divorced, and got married in my country outside the church. Wether we like it or not, it was literally a contract. An officer of the court was there, read the 'contract' which states our data, the legal parts of it (prenup, how assets were after marriage, etc), and the legal responsibilities. There was nothing there about 'until the end' or the likes.
I'm not sure how it is in other countries, and I am from a very catholic country, but most people don't realize that marriage is the contract that is governed by the government's law and not any vows or whatever the priest says in church. It is a contract and parties to that contract are allowed to change their mind and divorce (break contract).
It sounds horribly complicated. How do assets and dependents get treated? How does a will work? An inheritance?
Eg You marry for 5 years, and at 4.9 a relative leaves an inheritance. The executors get to work at 5.1 years. Where does the money go?
Maybe I’m overthinking it.
https://topnews.in/how-about-fixedterm-marital-contract-rene...
I don’t recall the exact numbers but even just considering how many sexual partners people have can drastically change average likelihood of eventually divorce - with virgin couples above 80% AFAIK (some overlap with religious communities likely). Even a few decades ago when survival was still pretty easy marriage had higher success rates.
The culture probably has a lot more to do with the rate of successful marriages than our safety or lifespan