A lot has improved in the last century as a result of feminism, and the necessity of marriage laws is not as significant as it used to be. Still, I think they s

A lot has improved in the last century as a result of feminism, and the necessity of marriage laws is not as significant as it used to be. Still, I think they serve an important purpose. A simple civil contract is not good enough for several reasons. First, people tend to make bad decisions when they are in love, and especially in situations where one party has fallen in love harder than the other, this would be very open to abuse. The second problem is that marriages often produce children. And children are not property in the traditional sense, and I think it is not in any way reasonable to handle child custody with a pre-nuptial agreement. The third problem is much more subtle and subjective, and I'm afraid I will have to do a bit of editorializing, but I think it is still quite important. The economy works well when everyone chiefly looks out for themselves, families and friendships work well when everyone chiefly looks after each other. Your mother didn't hand you a rental agreement the moment you were born, and while you may have had certain ad-hoc "I'll give you $20 if you mow the lawn" agreements with them, their desire for your well-being was based on much more than any potential value you might bring them in the future. A marriage is a lot more like a family than it is like an economy.