How things work in real life.

[gwendally]

Someone called me today to discuss whether they should get married.  I discussed the tax aspects.  One of them makes a .gov wage in the $60K range, the other makes essentially nothing, maybe $8K/year.  That is the only situation where it's beneficial for the tax code to get married, and also beneficial for getting social security benefits under the

Comments

[froggoddess]

Exactly. Until I get pregnant and decide that I want my children to have the good health insurance that my employer buys me, it makes no sense for us to get married. Neither of us goes to traditional doctors anyway, so the money I'm paying for my single coverage is mostly wasted anyway. If we do decide to get "married", there will be no government record of that marriage unless health insurance costs make it necessary.

[gwendally]

Another thing to consider is that it's a lot easier to divorce if you were actually married, so if your relationship gets into trouble I advise marriage to make the separation work better. :-)

There are real benefits to marriage when the OTHER END of a marriage is reached. Widows get better benefits than unmarried partners in lots of ways.

But, honestly, I'm telling my kids to leave the state out of it if they decide to get married. It feels to me like I'm being exploited for my silly choice of registering our church wedding. I want a GAY marriage!

[froggoddess]

Ha --- so if we break up I'll make sure to get married first. :)

That said, I am also keenly aware that by not being married there are certain rights/responsibilities that I don't have. Generally, the ones that gay marriage activists cite as the reasons they want marriage and not just civil unions: mostly the ability to make medical decisions and what to do if he dies -- right now, technically, his parents and brother are next of kin, and I am nobody. Is there a way to register a relationship with local hospitals, but not the IRS?

[likethewatch]

Yeah, see, that's why we got married: we both wanted to be really sure the other one is next of kin, just in case or in case of the inevitable. I don't think we are getting a tax benefit out of it, and I didn't have access to his very good health insurance until this month, when they added the benefit for same sex married couples. Did you know your employer (if you have one) doesn't have to do that? Recognizing my marriage is still optional for them, and they're very careful to make sure I don't accidentally get any federal benefit for a marriage the feds don't recognize. So we did it for sentimental reasons, like other people do who don't get married for the benefits.

[reannon]

I used to know people who got married so the one without health insurance could get it. Now that's pretty much useless too: both of our employers have that lovely new clause that says if the spouse's employer offers health insurance, you cannot cover them under yours. So even if J and I were married, we'd have to keep paying for two policies rather than one family policy. Oh, and since each of us has kids, we actually pay for two family policies, so his kids are covered through him and my son is covered through me. I cannot tell you how thrilled that makes me.

[kayjayuu]

Okay, not to sound crass about the actual issue, but... by remaining unmarried, one party's healthcare gets paid for by the taxpayers. It isn't free. So together they get to keep $110/mo and get health coverage that costs how much for the state?

This is what happens when government gets involved in the market, everything skews toward the unrealistic.

Wait'll this goes national in 2014.

[gwendally]

This is why I said "welcome to Massachusetts". The conservative states are really upset about the "destruction of the family" and I think they have a point, if "destruction of the family" can be equated to "didn't get married" (which I think is somewhat debatable, by the way

[crazyburro]

Worse, it was an easily predicted outcome.

[gwendally]

So was the Civil War when the Founders neglected to settle the issue of slavery in the new country.

They just picked their battle. WE just picked our battle: remember how enticing universal coverage sounded? So sweet a goal... we can clean up the broken bits later, we figured.

Except, uh, still haven't cleaned them up. If I were the rest of the country I'd rather wait to see how this plays out. But I *do* understand the allure of getting universal coverage. We'll pay for it with the unicorn farts leftover from powering our heating plants!

*blinking*

[marveen]

Considering some years I scraped by on only slightly more than 8 grand (is that gross or net?), "essentially nothing" may be overstating it a bit.

Re: *blinking*

[gwendally]

In a world where health insurance costs $6K/person, and food is $4K/person, and rent is another $4K/person, earning less than $14K isn't enough to cover the basic expenses of being an adult with a human body.

One can quibble about how high on the hog people are living - needing health insurance and all - but the people of my state don't quibble: these are minimum standards that society expects and if the citizen isn't capable of providing it then the state steps in and provides it up to that standard.

Re: *blinking*

[marveen]

Well, yeah. I've had health insurance for one brief shining period back in, I think it was '07...during which time I never ailed a thing, of course.

I was lucky enough to have the trailer to live in, but then the car payment took up any slack from no-rent.

Grey's current employer will cover his health insurance for twenty a month, which he is glad to hear. I will not be covered, though, since that's another two hundred or so per month. (They also don't cover dental, which stinks.)

Re: *blinking*

[gwendally]

Someone just wrote a really eloquent letter to a local newspaper about a proposed new library in their dinky little town that was going to raise real estate taxes by $200/person on average. He pointed out that he does not read $200/year worth of books, that his real estate tax bills were already 1/3 of his income, and that the standard of living that people were demanding was not a reasonable thing to demand of poor people

[az2tx]

The one thing that is missing in your advice (or at least not outlined here) is the issue of proper estate planning. Not being married prevents the ability to make healthcare decisions for your partner or to inherit from their intestate estate. So...if you are going to advise people against marriage for financial reasons, be sure to include a strong suggestion that they create appropriate durable and healthcare powers of attorney and a validly executed last will and testament and/or trust. Any money they save on taxes could easily be spent three-fold on legal fees later on down the road.