4 ms·
The idea is to get some of the government benefits of marriage without the overhead, i.e. the ability to make medical decisions and potentially lower tax rates
by jdavis703 8y ago
The idea is to get some of the government benefits of marriage without the overhead, i.e. the ability to make medical decisions and potentially lower tax rates depending on income situations.
Past generations of my family were prohibited from marriage because of race. It took a lot of rethinking of what marriage was for them to be granted those rights, ditto for LGBT people who just got those rights a few years ago in the US. There's still no reason why the current definition of marriage is the right definition.
- tptacek 8y agoCan't you arrange to make medical decisions for each other without being married? Isn't that what an MPOA does? I'm not sure what tax benefits you're looking at but I believe we pay for the right to be married. From a formal perspective, considering marriage as a (very old) legal and economic arrangement, and stripping it down to its essence (without any of the bullshit about it being a means to bring children into the world or express Judeo-Christian values), marriage is about durable interdependency. You agree to combine assets and opportunities, in order to maximize those opportunities jointly and to bear the costs of misfortune together. Define marriage as an "at-will" arrangement dispenses with durability. A person in a transient marriage can't reasonably put their spouse through medical school, or help them start a company --- or, for that matter, raise children --- without an onerous set of additional contractual arrangements that would asymptotically approach what marriage already is. Again: it's totally reasonable to want a long-term at-will relationship, and to seek one out. You don't have to get married.