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Originally Posted by Still Growing  If you take the benefits of being married one by one there is a way to enact them without the gov't institution of marriage.
1. Taxes: You could file jointly if you claimed to be married may be a solution.
2. Inheritance: We all know that wills are required even if you are married. So wills or children or marriage certificates issued privately would still be valid
3. Name Change: You could still choose to change your name if you wished. |
See, this is where I just don't understand. Why is getting rid of marriage a benefit? For 1, couples opt-in to either joint or single filing. By filing, they have to choose one or the other by checking either "married" or "married, filing separately". How would it be any different without government sanctioned marriage?
For 2, would we do away with the elective share that a spouse receives despite an adverse will, usually a percentage based upon the length of marriage? If so, that is a significant change, but you haven't mentioned it.
For 3, nobody is forced to change their name. It isn't even assumed. You have to go to file the appropriate papers to have your name changed. Again, it is already opt-in.
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In my view if the gov't was not involved in marriage we may see improvements to the institution that we never expected. By people looking to their church or company that they chose to get married by would be looked at more critically. I can imagine that some companies may even offer for a fee a service of instruction before marriage and then advertise their lower divorce rates. Others may advertise that their divorces were resolved more amicably and they boasted the lowest amount litigous divorces.
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I like this line of thinking, but it is a bit speculative. We don't know how the private sector would react. Your ideas, though, need not wait for the government to do away with marriage. Pre-marriage counseling could already start picking up on these ideas and running with them.
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By having marriages being universally managed by the gov't the actual ceremony at the church looses its importance or focus. If the gov't no longer managed marriage then people's focus would turn to custom marriages.
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The focus is on custom marriages, I think. A bunch of my friends are getting married. None of them plan a justice of the peace wedding. They all want to get married in traditional ways, at their house of worship, with their life-long priest, the bride wearing the traditional color (usually white around here), their families present. They want to exchange vows. They dream up all the details of the wedding, the reception, and the honeymoon. The government part of it is routinely an afterthought.
Is the government really all that involved in marriage as it is? By this, I mean marriage itself. There are a number of laws where government considers marriage as an element to be considered. Is the issue with the laws that consider marriage, or with government actions certifying marriages?