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A natural right, becomes a privilege when government gets involved.
You have the natural right to live with your significant other, but to have government recognition and all of the legal protections it offers you have to be legally married.
I am currently living with my S.O. but the government sees us as nothing more than roommates legally, so all of those legal protections for married couples do not apply to us. When we get married we will be legally next of kin and have the benefit of those legal protections. If the government just gave those protections to everyone that said they were together there would be a big mess.
There is a natural right to be born, but without a birth certificate the government doesn't recognize your existence.
i don't get it. Why does a person need a license to get married? It seems retarded to me. I think the whole license thing is just some big.gov intrusion into people's lives. Is it some national security thing? Just dump the whole thing and let people marry their boyfriend/girlfriend/martian/cousin/sister/whatever in any way shape or form.
You are right. I should have said that in the absence of a third-party objection, most courts would honor the parties' intent when it came to apportioning property, debts, and custody. But no court would be *bound* to do so.
I'm not sure what you mean.
If two people lived together - but never got married - and they agreed to apportion property in a certain manner upon their break-up (or even one's death) - and then that's what happened, they would never see the inside of a courtroom to begin with.
If they were in fact in court over property/debt after a breakup, then there clearly is no mutual intent for the court to enforce (if the intent were mutual, one wouldn't have sued the other).
If they had the intent to split property/debt in a certain way upon one's death, a court most certainly would NOT recognize that intent - without marriage, property transfers to one's legal heirs, not to live-in girlfriends.
A natural right, becomes a privilege when government gets involved.
Who is family and who is not is very much a legal question when it comes to rights and responsibilities, such as property ownership, debts, taxes, child custody, medical decisions...
Now of course, you can hire an attorney to litigate any or all of these issues separately as the occasions arise. Or you can just get a marriage license.
(Yes, I know divorce attorneys can cost a lot of money.)
If you expect the government to support/recognize/enforce your's and your partner's marital rights and responsibilities, the most efficient thing to do is get a marriage license. But it is optional. If you don't want a marriage license - don't get one. You can still enter into any mutually consenting personal arrangement you like. You can call it marriage if you want, plenty of people do.
Should it come to court, though, the government won't necessarily support/recognize/enforce the agreement you think you might have had with your partner(s).
government needs to get out of the marriage business altogether.
give people civil unions and let the churches, synagogues, and mosques marry people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fireandice1000
I don't get it. Why does a person need a license to get married? It seems retarded to me. I think the whole license thing is just some Big.Gov intrusion into people's lives. Is it some national security thing? Just dump the whole thing and let people marry their boyfriend/girlfriend/martian/cousin/sister/whatever in any way shape or form.
Marriage is contract law. It legally combines them into a family, giving them family rights such as ICU visits and estate inheritance (among other things). It's not government intrusion, it's just government recognizing that you are choosing this person as somebody who is of a certain importance in your life.
If they had the intent to split property/debt in a certain way upon one's death, a court most certainly would NOT recognize that intent - without marriage, property transfers to one's legal heirs, not to live-in girlfriends.
Yes, there's that third-party problem. A third-party problem could also arise in the form of children's protective services, or a hospital not recognizing a partner's right to make medical decisions on behalf of an incapacitated person, or a debt collector trying to determine liability, etc.
I only meant that if a couple had been living together, and needed the help of a court to settle a problem, the court would take into account the couple's original intentions, along with any other relevant factors. But the court would not be *bound* by those intentions.
No, you don't. But it can be a lot cheaper to get a marriage license than cover the rather exhaustive ground that a marriage license already covers.
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