Gone are the days of shotgun weddings and running off to elope with the one you’ve fallen head over heels in love with. Although there are still some couples who seemingly fall in love, plan a wedding, and begin a life together like a real-life fairy tale, there are many more people stopping to think long and hard over the decision to marry.
When it comes to the values and norms surrounding marriage, America is divided, near equally. The public’s perception of marriage has changed vastly over the years. As the public’s views are changing, The Pew Research Center shares it’s finding in a survey.
The survey asked respondents if, “Society is better off if people make marriage and having children a priority or society is just as well off if people have priorities other than marriage and children. Some 46% of adults chose the first statement, while 50% chose the second statement.”
Results vary for different age ranges. There were differences between those who have been married before and those who haven’t. There were also some notable differences between gender. Among those who’ve never been married, sixty-one percent of adults said they would like to get married someday according to a 2010 Pew Research Study, but that number has dropped to 53% with the latest study.
The general consensus has changed over the years; you may find yourself grappling with the decision on whether or not to marry your partner. For those not currently in relationships, the decision and thoughts about marriage are still often thought about.
We know some folks are unsure about the decision to marry. So, we’ve put together an in-depth guide to the advantages and disadvantages of marriage.
Marriage Comes with Many Pros
Considering all of the aspects of a legal union includes much more than just your feelings for the one you love. Making your relationship bound by law and public record, may not feel much different than spending the rest of your lives together without making it a legal union, but there are many differences. Below you’ll find the advantages and disadvantages of marriage. There may be some examples you haven’t given much thought to.
Legal Benefits of Marriage
To start our Pros for marriage, we’ll get into some of the legal benefits of marriage. It’s not always fun to think about the logistics of marriage without getting into your feelings, but facing the facts could help you make the best decision in the long run.
Marital Tax Benefits
Two of the benefits that you’ll be able to take advantage of legally within your first year of marriage are tax benefits. Here’s what that might look like for you and your spouse.
Filing Taxes Jointly
Depending on how much you and your new spouse earn, you may be able to take advantage of filing your taxes jointly. As a married couple, you can file together or separately; the choice is yours. According to Turbo Tax, the majority of couples could benefit from filing jointly.
Filing jointly gives you access to marital tax deductions, but those will be unique to your situation. For couples with two high incomes, it may not make sense to file jointly. But those couples with one high earner and one average earner, or one income only, will benefit from taking up this tax benefit.
Marital Tax Deduction
Among several of the deductions you may qualify for as a couple, is the marital tax deduction. The marital tax deduction is unlimited and is one of the biggest relievers of tax owed for many couples. That’s because using this deduction allows you to transfer assets without limit to your spouse, at any time, without a tax penalty.
Typically, transferring an asset such as a property to another person, while accepting nothing or less than the value of that property, would constitute a gift tax penalty. With the marital tax deduction, you wouldn’t be subject to that tax.
As a non-married but together for life couple, you won’t get to take these benefits or qualify for the same credits. Not every couple wants their financial resources or lives to be combined, though, the decision is very personal.
Remember that consulting a legal or tax professional is your best bet for making tax decisions.
Legal Decision Making
If you remain an unmarried couple, there are legal benefits regarding decision making that you may ultimately lose out on. Consider the legal ability of decision making as an example of events that may affect your future.
Legal Decision-Making Benefits
As the legal spouse of your partner, you’ll be able to hold the Next-of-Kin status. In the event your loved one gets into an accident, if you’re unmarried, yours and your spouse’s previously discussed wishes may not be taken into account – it’ll be up to the next of kin to make decisions.
Whether your spouse becomes critically ill, injured, disabled, or deceased, you’ll want to be the one with the power to make decisions that are best for both of you. You may want to make decisions regarding burial or suing for wrongful death, medical malpractice, or otherwise. Being married gives you these possibilities.
Financial Benefits of Marriage
Among the advantages and disadvantages of marriage are legal, financial benefits such as Retirement, prenuptial agreements, and social security benefits.
Retirement Benefits
As a married person, you may have your partner contribute to your retirement account in a spousal IRA if you’re unemployed or rollover their IRA into yours upon death. The catch is that you’ll need to file taxes jointly to take advantage of this benefit.
Prenuptial Agreement Benefits
Commonly referred to as a prenup, you and your spouse can make legal decisions regarding your financial situations should the union come to an end. It’s an excellent protective benefit used by many couples.
Social Security Benefits
As a married couple, you’ll have access to social security benefits in some instances. To find out more about the benefits you can take advantage of, you can read this article on married social security benefits.
Benefits to Your Overall Well-Being
As documented by Robert H. Schmerling, MD, of Harvard Health Publishing, there are numerous benefits to your health that marriage brings. Aside from your medical health, you’ll find that statistically, marriage brings benefits to your social and emotional well-being as well.
Health Benefits of Marriage
With the rising costs of medical insurance and the current state of employer benefits versus the health exchange, this benefit can be on the fence for some. While some couples will benefit more monetarily from keeping their own employer’s policies, some couples will benefit from spousal and family health benefit plans.
Keep in mind that you may not be granted family leaves time in the event your long-time spouse becomes injured or ill if you’re not married.
Aside from legal ramifications, married couples, on average live longer, survive significant operations more often, have lower instances of suffering from depression, have fewer cases of medical complications such as heart attacks, strokes, and cancer diagnosis.
Keep in mind that health benefits come from marriages where partnerships are happy. Experiencing the ups and downs of marriage will not negate the benefits. But for those in marriages where chronic stress, crisis, and unhappiness prevail, these health benefits aren’t likely to appear.
Social and Emotional Benefits of Marriage
While many of the benefits to marriage and based on logic and reason, sometimes the decision to marry boils down to how your spouse makes you feel emotional. After all, finding love can be a beautiful thing for many people.
But long after the momentous day comes and goes, the emotional benefits of marriage will carry you through. As the saying goes, happy spouse, happy house. And statistically, marriage does bring happiness benefits to the people who choose legal partnership.
To start the discussion, we’ll talk about the benefits of having your partner around day after day. Seeing your spouse each day brings a boost to mood, intimacy, and sex drive. The reliability, trust, and presence of your partner long term are known to extend happiness in the lives of married couples.
Because you have a partner that lives with you and is (hopefully) in tune with you, communicating openly, you’re statistically less likely to develop depression. Having a partner around means that you have someone to confide in, open up your feelings to, and to help keep you from sinking into isolation or feel alone.
For many couples, there’s a massive benefit to feeling heard by the partner you’re sharing your life. You’ll also take advantage of the ability to release stress and anxiety, break away from gender roles that are straining, and work with your partner on common goals. All of these emotional advantages combined, help raise the likelihood that you’ll live into older age.
Marriage Isn’t Without Its Cons
Those against marriage and legal partnership can argue that for each advantage, there’s a disadvantage. To make the comparisons equal, we’ll discuss the flip side to each advantage mentioned earlier.
Legal Cons of Marriage
The legalities of marriage are complex and intertwined. There’s a lot to understand about what it legally means to be married. You should understand what you can be liable for, the ramifications of divorce, and more. Dive in to find out when being legally married may cause put you at a disadvantage.
Marital Tax Cons
Just as there are several tax benefits of marriage, there are a few cons too. Read on to find out how marriage can negatively affect your tax liabilities.
Tax Disadvantages of Marriage
As your combined household income increases, you could be held liable for a higher tax bracket, making your tax liability higher. That means more money coming out of your pockets.
If you want to maximize tax benefits and minimize tax disadvantages, get with an attorney or tax professional. They can guide you through tax liabilities, itemized deductions limited by income. They can also help couples who face one partner’s tax refund being garnished for unpaid debts.
Financial Disadvantages of Marriage
As much as we want to believe that the financial gains from a legal union will protect us, it’s not always the case. Although marriage brings many economic benefits, there are some downsides to marriage when it comes to financial responsibilities as well.
Debt Disadvantages of Marriage
Financial woes plague married couples near and far. According to Ramsey Solutions, a study found that nearly two-thirds of marriages began their union in debt. The same survey found one-third of participants hid purchases from their spouses after arguing with them about money. The last section of the study found ninety-four percent of those who considered their marriages to be “great” often talk about money and dreams with their partners.
Money is a topic that often causes conflict in marriages, not enough people are talking about it, and one of the significant disadvantages of unions is that what’s theirs is yours and yours is theirs. You’re financially responsible for the debt that your partner already had or incurs along the way, and vise Versa.
The issues are too complex to get into how individual states handle debts owed, how different lenders handle spousal debt, and what can be done about debt regarding prenuptial agreements. If you want to know exactly how marriage will affect your financial life, it’s best to consult with a knowledgeable professional.
Financial Decisions Are Not Your Own
Because money matters are often swept under the rug, avoided, and downright ignored, decisions could be being made without you. That means money decisions not being made by you could be affecting your debt, your retirement, your investments, your daily living situations, the home you live in, and more.
If you and your partner aren’t talking about money, but you’re married, the money will still be spent, and decisions may still be made that you will be responsible for. When you’re not married, these decisions may still happen but could have less legal repercussions or responsibility for you.
Children
You may be wondering why children are listed in the financial disadvantage section of this guide, but the answer is simple. With children comes great responsibility, including financial obligation. Being married could potentially be providing one partner with a false sense of protection.
Take, for instance, one parent works and the other stays home for 20 years, believe that because they’re married, their financial future is covered. Even though the couple made the decision together that one parent would stay home, if that couple didn’t put safeguards or stipulations into place, one partner could be at a severe disadvantage should the marriage end in divorce.
Couples who remain unmarried but have children together are often more aware of their financial vulnerability in these situations.
The Wedding Could Set You Back
If you’ve ever been married before or are currently planning your wedding, then you know that wedding costs have become astronomical. For those not getting help with the price tag, you could be shelling out around $30,000 – which is the national average. However, the standard in states like New York and Chicago have an average closer to $50,000.
Keep in mind, that nearly two-thirds of couples go into marriage in debt, we’re willing to bet the wedding may have something to do with those figures.
Divorce is Expensive
This is only a con if you end up getting divorced. Right, but when you look at the numbers regarding divorce, it’s simply not a consideration you should overlook. Divorce can get very expensive, very quickly, and even more so if children are involved. Divorce can bring out a shocking side of even the best people.
Whether you’re blindsided or saw and planned for the divorce, not too many people are making it out unscathed – financially. If you’re lucky, divorce may have been considered in your prenuptial (or postnuptial) agreement, which could help ease the transition.
There are a few factors that make divorce more (or less) expensive. Things like owning a home together, owning other assets or investments together, walking away with debt, needing to move, needing to purchase additional vehicles, or get rid of excess cars, and more. It’s always a good idea to keep an eye on your financial state – married or not.
Detriments to Your Health and Overall Well-Being
One could argue that the benefits of marriage are circumstantial, since, not all friendships are loving, caring, and functional unions. Generally speaking, the benefits are more widely accepted, with the disadvantages being mostly circumstantial.
Even though these disadvantages largely depend on the couple and their unique relationship, they’re topics you want to visit, talk about with your partner, and think all the way through before making your financial decision.
Commitment Isn’t A Guarantee
You’ve probably heard the phrase, “humans are social creatures.” Not surprisingly, commitment is harder to come by than one would think. Loyalty doesn’t refer only to sex, but that is a big part of it. Studies on extramarital sex are hard to come by, especially those who use a nationally representative sample.
The last year a study was done of this nature was 1997, and back then, things were much different. That was long before smartphones and social media skyrocketed, forever changing the public’s view and attitudes towards relationships.
In this study, 22.7 percent of men were reported to engage in extramarital sex, while 11.6 percent of women had been involved in extramarital sex. This study also only asked about sex, not other types of affairs, which could be an essential factor for some.
You May End Up Feeling Stuck
Remember all of those social, emotional, and well-being benefits to marriage there are? Well, those things aren’t always a guarantee. There are many reasons a marriage can start to falter and become unpleasant. Some are easily fixed, and others are not. Some unions get off track but make it back, some are doomed from the start, and some aren’t able to get it right.
While all of those things may be happening, it’s possible to feel stuck, isolated, not heard, trapped in the relationship. Some people feel they can’t leave because of the commitment they made. If one spouse is sick, they don’t want to hurt their spouse, or they’re caring for young children or even other family members.
According to Psychology Today, it’s not uncommon to feel this way in a relationship or marriage. Millions of Americans feel negative about their relationship with seemingly no way out. Of course, in most cases, no one is being forced to stay in a relationship but it can feel that way.
Partners can feel that there is a lack of autonomy. They can be in denial about the state their relationship is in, have other unconscious fears, or have different unique feelings about the relationship they’re in. The commonality is feeling stuck, alone, or otherwise unhappy long term.
Summing It Up
Considering marriage from a pros and cons standpoint, or even a rational or logical perspective can take the fun out of the decision to marry. It’s better to talk about all of the hard things and decisions with your prospective spouse, before-hand. You don’t want to be ill-prepared.
There are so very many advantages to marriage and some unfortunate disadvantages, that’s true. Each couple’s decision to marry will be based on their unique life circumstances, how they feel about relationships, everything they’ve been through as individuals and as a couple. There is no one right or wrong answer.
The most important thing to remember is that relationships and marriages thrive on trust, communication, and willingness to do whatever it takes. Any couple who has been married for a long enough time will tell you that you may not like or love your partner every day for the rest of your lives.
To make it work, you have to remember why you do like and love that person and be willing to carry out your commitment to stick around until you feel positive about them again. Don’t forget to bring up any concerns, fears, or doubts you have about any of these pros and cons with your partner; it’s an excellent start for setting up good lines of communication that may carry you both into a long, successful marriage.
