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Should we do away with marriage as a legal status?

Should we do away with marriage as a legal status?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 20 45.5%

  • No.

    Votes: 23 52.3%

  • Knibb High football rules!

    Votes: 1 2.3%
  • Total voters
    44
Peter Grimm said:
7 Tax Advantages of Getting Married - TurboTax® Tax Tips & Videos
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#3 is between an employee and employer - none of your business.

#5 is as it should be for any partnership. If one took all the trouble to create a business it would amount to the same thing.

#6 Oh boy! Only one tax form to file - yeah, THAT'S a big plus, isn't it? :lamo

You should read your own cite. It's not "7 Tax Advantages", it's only six with #7 being a list of drawbacks. Maybe you missed that.
 
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legal marriage isnt going anywhere nor should it.
of course it could be tweaked here and there but its illogical and irrational to think its going anywhere.

theres no good or enough pros vs cons of doing away with it.
 
Peter Grimm said:
10 Ways Getting Married Affects Your Taxes - H&R Block | Block Talk - The H&R Block Official Corporate Blog
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2. Tax brackets. Tax brackets are different for each filing status, so your income may no longer be taxed at the same rate as when you were single. When you’re married and file a joint return, your income is combined — which, in turn, may bump one or both of you into a higher tax bracket.
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Yeah - that higher tax bracket is a good thing. :roll:

10. Marriage penalty.A marriage penalty exists when two individuals filing a joint return pay more tax than the sum of their individual tax liabilities calculated as if they were filing as single taxpayers. One reason this occurs is when the MFJ income tax brackets and standard deduction are not equal to twice the single income tax bracket and standard deduction. Under current law, the marriage penalty is partly alleviated because the lower income tax brackets (10% and 15%) and standard deduction for MFJ are exactly double that of single individuals. However, that may not be the case after 2012 as the provision providing for relief from the marriage penalty is set to expire. At this time, it’s unclear if Congress will extend the relief.
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Another ding for married couples.


More to the point, I've calculated our taxes both ways over the decades and it's always come out pretty much the same either way. There is no big advantage for couples with the tax man unless you make a hell of a lot of money.
 
Peter Grimm said:
I didn't. I simply stated that there was a cost.

If you're such a stickler for data, can you prove that no cost exists?
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Expecting people to chase orbiting teapots now? :lamo
 
Quik said:
No. They made it that way, not me. If the government wasn't in the marriage business then I wouldn't have to go to the government in order to have my marriage validated.
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Have your marriage validated? If you don't want a civil contract with your religious spouse no one will force you to do it. In the end that's all a marriage is, legally - a civil partnership.
 
Peter Grimm said:
You and your wife can be married, but there is no reason the government needs to be a party to that.
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And I'm quite happy with the standard marriage contract we put on file at the county courthouse. I feel no need to pay some attorney god knows how much to create a standard document that's fifty pages long to cover everything that common law already covers when it comes to marriage.
 
MoSurveyor said:
Have your marriage validated? If you don't want a civil contract with your religious spouse no one will force you to do it. In the end that's all a marriage is, legally - a civil partnership.
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That's the key word. The government has created a situation in which I am forced to use their services. If their services did not exist, I wouldn't require them.
 
Quik said:
That's the key word. The government has created a situation in which I am forced to use their services. If their services did not exist, I wouldn't require them.
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:lol:

That is all.
 
OK....I:m just sayin,' I'm just sayin,' that I search my memory in vain for a single forum discussion about "getting the government out of marriage" before the same sex marriage debates began........
 
Quik said:
That's the key word. The government has created a situation in which I am forced to use their services. If their services did not exist, I wouldn't require them.
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You aren't forced to do anything. Hold a wedding in a church. Don't tell the government. Nobody will care.
 
Strucker said:
OK....I:m just sayin,' I'm just sayin,' that I search my memory in vain for a single forum discussion about "getting the government out of marriage" before the same sex marriage debates began........
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Psssst....There isn't any. I've looked. That particular "tune only started hitting the charts" a few months ago.At best I could find was a couple of libertarians stating that the Federal Government shouldn't be involve.Now it's evolved in a whole different tune.A tune in which even State governments shouldn't be evolved.
 
Quik said:
That's the key word. The government has created a situation in which I am forced to use their services. If their services did not exist, I wouldn't require them.
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you are not "forced"
 
roguenuke said:
Actually, you would be wrong. Those bio parents who try to raise children without marriage end up more often than not breaking up before the child is even in school. Some can do it, most can't. If they could, they would probably just get married so they both have more protections when it comes to the child/each other.
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Good point. I'm sure homes of married parents who stay married "for the kids" churn out rocket scientists and emotionally perfect adults.
 
Verthaine said:
Psssst....There isn't any. I've looked. That particular "tune only started hitting the charts" a few months ago.At best I could find was a couple of libertarians stating that the Federal Government shouldn't be involve.Now it's evolved in a whole different tune.A tune in which even State governments shouldn't be evolved.
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An unlikely coincidence.
 
Deuce said:
You aren't forced to do anything. Hold a wedding in a church. Don't tell the government. Nobody will care.
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I've already explained how the government is still involved. Do you have reading comprehension problems?
 
Peter Grimm said:
But get rid of marriage as a legal status. It serves no purpose except to make society fight over nothing.
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This is a good idea in theory, but in practice it may be harder than people imagine:

"... as a legal matter, separating marriage from the government entirely may be just too much, at least in the United States. Helen Dale, a three-time fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies and a classical liberal trained in different types of legal systems, wrote a brief in defense of same-sex marriage recognition for the Reason Foundation (the non-profit that publishes Reason.com and Reason Magazine). As a “libertarian aside” in her brief (pdf), she detailed how America’s significant use of common law in family courts—that is, the accumulation of case law built up over years of precedents—may be a huge hurdle to such a broad libertarian goal."

Why the United States Can
 
Aderleth said:
This is a good idea in theory, but in practice it may be harder than people imagine:

"... as a legal matter, separating marriage from the government entirely may be just too much, at least in the United States. Helen Dale, a three-time fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies and a classical liberal trained in different types of legal systems, wrote a brief in defense of same-sex marriage recognition for the Reason Foundation (the non-profit that publishes Reason.com and Reason Magazine). As a “libertarian aside” in her brief (pdf), she detailed how America’s significant use of common law in family courts—that is, the accumulation of case law built up over years of precedents—may be a huge hurdle to such a broad libertarian goal."

Why the United States Can
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That's ok, just reverse all that case law bull**** and start over.
 
Quik said:
That's ok, just reverse all that case law bull**** and start over.
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Spoken like someone who knows nothing about our legal system.
 
Aderleth said:
This is a good idea in theory, but in practice it may be harder than people imagine:

"... as a legal matter, separating marriage from the government entirely may be just too much, at least in the United States. Helen Dale, a three-time fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies and a classical liberal trained in different types of legal systems, wrote a brief in defense of same-sex marriage recognition for the Reason Foundation (the non-profit that publishes Reason.com and Reason Magazine). As a “libertarian aside” in her brief (pdf), she detailed how America’s significant use of common law in family courts—that is, the accumulation of case law built up over years of precedents—may be a huge hurdle to such a broad libertarian goal."

Why the United States Can
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It would certainly be a big change. Good find, BTW.

That said, there's a lot of bull**** in that article as well, you have to admit. The author seems to have a dog in the hunt.... maybe a bit of confirmation bias seeping through.

Take this gem... "For example, Dale asked, what would happen in a system where marriages were treated as entirely private contracts if a couple decided to enter in a relationship defined by Sharia Law? What would happen if parts of the contract contradicted rights recognized by constitutional precedents or case law?"

Well, Dale, you can't write ANY contract that contradicts state or federal law, so I guess that answers that, huh?
 
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Peter Grimm said:
It would certainly be a big change. Good find, BTW.

That said, there's a lot of bull**** in that article as well, you have to admit. The author seems to have a dog in the hunt.... maybe a bit of confirmation bias seeping through.

Take this gem... "For example, Dale asked, what would happen in a system where marriages were treated as entirely private contracts if a couple decided to enter in a relationship defined by Sharia Law? What would happen if parts of the contract contradicted rights recognized by constitutional precedents or case law?"

Well, Dale, you can't write ANY contract that contradicts state or federal law, so I guess that answers that, huh?
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I think the point she's making there is that if we were to attempt to just ignore all of the existing precedent on marriage, we'd pretty much have to start all over and re-create such things from scratch, which would be hugely laborious and absurdly complicated. It would also completely **** over lots of people whose relationships are in some way dependent on current precedent. With respect to the text you quoted, if we've done away with existing precedent and caselaw, we can no longer use those things as a basis for establishing whether or not a given marriage contract violates either the constitution or a statute. To put it another way, we can't know what does and doesn't violate the constitution without reference to the 200 years of precedent that have established the precise parameters of constitutional law. That's a pretty serious problem.
 
I don't see how it's that hard really. The only problem is existing contracts, but the government can just deal with those contracts like any other. As for families all that really matters is custody. How is it not easy? It's not as if libertarians want to replace it with a system that does anywhere near as much. We are only interested in contract law and the rights of the child. Nothing else matters really.
 
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