re: My girlfriend gave me an ultimatum.

quote:

---

She said she is going to break up with me unless I sign a legal contract stating that she gets half of my assets if we ever break up. (Yes, that is my sarcastic way of saying that she wants to get married). I told her that I ran the numbers and it sounds a lot cheaper to just break up now instead of her idea where she gets half of my stuff if we break up. She didn't like that answer. I'll miss her if she bolts, but not as much as I would have missed half of my life savings. That life savings took years to accrue. A girl can be replaced tomorrow.

---

quote:

---

I have never understood why some of y’all act like this is a forgone conclusion.

BTW, tons of research indicating that married men earn more and accumulate more assets over their lifetimes than men who never get married.

Here's how much more money married men in America are making than everyone else

---

It's not a foregone conclusion that divorce follows marriage (and people who act otherwise are being unreasonable), but the risk is very high given how costly it often is for men.

I would also take your chart there with several grains of salt. The big issue is that marriage is increasingly a lagging indicator of wealth - that is, it's becoming less and less feasible for the "ordinary man" to get married in the first place for many reasons (this is actually true of men and women both, even though we're just dealing with men here). Chief among them on the male side of things is that very few women want to marry men who make less than them, while the reverse is not true, so it makes sense that married men would be an income outlier. This is a reflection not of a man's future windfall if he gets married but of women's selection of wealthier men, all else equal, for marriage.

quote:

---

It should be to leave immediately, which hopefully is what the OP’s girl does.

Almost every heterosexual woman on the planet wants to be married someday. Only an idiot would be surprised by a negative reaction from his girlfriend after he tells her he doesn’t want to marry her.

---

I didn't say the average girlfriend of X years, I said the average woman, period, whether in a relationship with you or not. That comment was in response to an entirely separate line of conversation that's not worth rehashing.

I think OP's girl is right to leave, although part of me suspects OP is just being a clown with how he's phrasing things and causing problems that don't need to be caused. I don't think most girls who are thinking of marriage are thinking about it in the sense of a dry legal arrangement that entitles the couple to various benefits while married and property division upon splitting. They're thinking of it as a permanent commitment with a beautiful formal ceremony where they're the star of the show for a day. You can have the latter without the former. OP is just being kind of an abrasive dick about it when he doesn't have to. (Unless he just doesn't want the commitment at all, in which case they ought to just split)

No need for prenups. Why is everyone so paranoid? Women are more trustworthy than we give them credit for and less spiteful than most men think. Why go on living our lives in fear?

quote:

---

I didn't say the average girlfriend of X years, I said the average woman, period, whether in a relationship with you or not. That comment was in response to an entirely separate line of conversation that's not worth rehashing.

---

Gotcha. I think I misunderstood there. Although, I do think someone who “doesn’t believe” in one of the most important institutions in western civilization is wrong at a minimum.

quote:

---

I don't think most girls who are thinking of marriage are thinking about it in the sense of a dry legal arrangement that entitles the couple to various benefits while married and property division upon splitting. They're thinking of it as a permanent commitment with a beautiful formal ceremony where they're the star of the show for a day. You can have the latter without the former.

---

You’re probably right about the two different points of view but I honestly don’t think you can separate them. When you marry someone, you’re taking someone you previously didn’t even know and making them your next of kin. From a societal standpoint, they become your most important family member. That creates a whole set of rights and responsibilities for both of you and I’m not sure how that gets acknowledged without some type of framework like legal marriage.

quote:

---

OP is just being kind of an abrasive dick about it when he doesn't have to. (Unless he just doesn't want the commitment at all, in which case they ought to just split)

---

Agree 100%

quote:

---

I think any woman who falls for that will probably fulfill your low expectations of women as life partners.

---

I hope she sees this bro!

Come back when you're ready for a serious discussion of a nuanced subject.


@Dadren:

quote:

---

The risks can be mitigated. As others have said, get a prenup if you’re that worried. Also, divorce doesn’t just happen. It’s less like a car accident and more like heart disease. You can take steps to minimize the probability it ever happens.

---

Prenups are a crapshoot as far as actually holding up in court is concerned. A lot of it depends on your individual judge which is not a good gamble for men to take IMO.

I would definitely grant you that there are sound preventive steps that reduce the risk of divorce, and that a lot of men don't follow them, which means that the atrocious divorce rate in the US isn't an inevitability. Personally I don't think there's much benefit to involving the state, so the risk measured against the benefit is still high. But I understand why others feel differently.

quote:

---

Maybe to a degree but I doubt to a significant degree. I 100% agree that women almost always marry across and up the socioeconomic ladder and over the past few decades woman’s average pay has skyrocketed, but the man at the median still out-earns the woman at the median by a lot. There are still plenty of “average men” for the “average woman” to select.

---

I'm not sure that the median male income even exceeds median female income anymore, at least among the unmarried 20-somethings looking to get married. If it does, I would strongly contest that it's by "a lot."

That said, your data spans several decades (I think - it's from 2016, but it incorporates all age ranges), so obviously what I'm talking about is a more recent phenomenon.

Let me post the counterfactual to you then - by what mechanism does getting married lead you to make so much more money? Certainly as a household you make more money going from 1 working person to 2 working people, but that's not what your data measured, it measured the individual man.

quote:

---

The most rock solid prenup is to not get married to begin with.

---

Be careful what states you live in or work in. There is lots of palimony and common law marriage out there ready to bite you in your single arse.

quote:

---

Let me post the counterfactual to you then - by what mechanism does getting married lead you to make so much more money? Certainly as a household you make more money going from 1 working person to 2 working people, but that's not what your data measured, it measured the individual man.

---

It could be correlation like you suggested earlier. The article also mentioned this so I’ll concede it as a possibility.

This is anecdotal but in my case, I’m pretty certain I would be earning less if I didn’t marry my wife and later have kids. I think it’s psychological; I started thinking more strategically about my career because people depended on me. I know for a fact there were roles I would have settled into if I was single, but being a husband and a father defeated my complacency and pushed me to look for better.

I doubt this is everyone, but I’d think it’s enough men that, on average, you’d see married men outpace single men.

quote:

---

Although, I do think someone who “doesn’t believe” in one of the most important institutions in western civilization is wrong at a minimum.

---

Elaborate on this for me a bit if you would. Because to me, yes, "marriage" as a permanent, monogamous commitment between a heterosexual couple with childrearing as a primary goal was unquestionably of great historical importance to Western civilization. I got no problem with all that. I don't think the arcane, at times arbitrary and greatly punishing legal rules that have been built up around it in modern times have anything to do with it though. Hence my splitting of the two out earlier - there's marriage as a social institution, which I have no problem with, and marriage as a legal one, which I think is totally broken and best avoided even if you intend to lead a life in harmony with traditional views of marriage as a social institution.

quote:

---

You’re probably right about the two different points of view but I honestly don’t think you can separate them. When you marry someone, you’re taking someone you previously didn’t even know and making them your next of kin. From a societal standpoint, they become your most important family member. That creates a whole set of rights and responsibilities for both of you and I’m not sure how that gets acknowledged without some type of framework like legal marriage.

---

Ask the Mexicans, seriously
I don't mean to be trite, but people do it all the time. It's hard to comment too generally on this because procedures vary so much by state.
The short of (my understanding of) it is that you can't fully escape the state being involved unless you and your girl magically agree on every aspect of how to split, because the state has some default procedures if either person takes things to court (typically around child support and visitation), but the degree to which you are explicitly constrained by the law is much lesser without the formal legal agreement of a marriage. This comes up the most with property splitting (which is where OP was coming from in the first place).
You can also enter into more limited legally binding agreements over select issues without going all the way in on marriage - for instance, your state might let you grant limited power of attorney to your girl to make medical decisions for you if you're incapacitated (and vice versa if she is). Or, even though she's not a legal heir and wouldn't have a right to your estate if you died intestate, you can plan your estate to leave her property when you die.