of Queercents week is by Nina Smith.
About a year ago, I started reading an anonymous family finance
blog called Tired but
happy. At first, I thought it was written by a gay woman
because she referred to her significant other using the word
partner. I’m always wrong when I jump to conclusions. Over time, I
learned that her partner was a man and they are raising a son
together. I’ve always been fascinated by their decision not to
marry so I recently asked if she would write a guest post about
money and matrimony. These are her words…
Although we have been in a committed heterosexual relationship for
over five years, my partner and I have chosen not to get married.
For us, this is a choice. For many, marriage is not even an option.
We object to marriage for many reasons.
I am uncomfortable with the religious overtones of marriage, and
with the public spectacle and extravagance of most of today’s
weddings. My partner objects to the state’s involvement in personal
relationships, and feels that what should be basic human rights,
such as access to health care, are awarded and withheld unfairly
based on marital status.
We both feel that being “husband and wife” would make it harder to
maintain our commitment to an anti-sexist family structure. And,
for us, refusing to marry is a statement of solidarity with LGBT
folks, who are denied the right to marry. We feel a responsibility
to make this statement, although we can imagine circumstances (such
as risking losing access to health care if one of us is terminally
ill) that would override this.
This was not an easy decision, and it is a decision that we revisit
regularly. At different times, we have both felt ambivalent about
marriage, and doubted that we were taking the right approach. Our
LGBT friends and family have also reacted in a variety of ways to
our unmarried status. Some of our gay friends have said they don’t
feel that it helps them for us to remain unmarried. Some have been
happy that we’ve chosen to be allies in this way. One close friend,
a biological woman in a relationship with a trans woman, told me
that she didn’t think she could bring herself to be friends with a
straight couple who was married, unless they were forced to marry
to obtain citizenship.
In many ways, being a woman unmarried to my male partner is similar
to being part of a same sex unmarried relationship. Legally and
financially, we face many of the same challenges. But our situation
is different, and I would argue that it is easier, in some key
ways.
Here’s what we have in common with same sex couples.
Workplace partner benefits are a huge issue. Like
many LGBT couples, our freedom to change jobs, and therefore our
ability to grow in our careers, is severely limited by the ways
some employers exclude us from necessary benefits like heath
insurance. Ironically, my employer denies my partner health
insurance because we’re a so-called straight couple. If we were
same sex partners, he would be covered, but because he’s a man and
I’m a woman, he’s not covered unless we’re married. On the other
hand, three years ago we were fortunate that my partner’s employer
changed its health insurance policy to include all unmarried
couples, gay and straight.
Taxes are more complicated for us than for married
couples. In our case, it actually
benefits us at tax time to be unmarried. Because the IRS
considers me a single mother, I qualify for many tax credits I
wouldn’t be eligible for if we filed together.
We can’t afford to die. Since we’re unmarried, we
don’t have that special exemption from inheritance taxes that
married spouses have. That means if I kick the bucket, my grieving
partner (who is also dealing with being suddenly a single father)
will have to produce cancelled checks and other proofs to show that
he paid for half of our house and related expenses. Otherwise,
he’ll get taxed on the ENTIRE value of the house when I die. If he
proves he paid for half of it, he has nine months to pay taxes on
my half of the value. Oh, and all other money, including insurance
payouts, that he inherits from me? He’s taxed on that too. Then
there’s the fact that he wouldn’t be able to collect Social
Security survivor benefits (although our son would get monthly
checks until he’s 18). That’s why we own way more life insurance
than a married couple with a similar income would need.
We can’t afford to break up. There are no divorce
courts for unmarried partners. If we have an acrimonious breakup,
all custody disputes related to our son are handled in family
court. But if we need legal intervention to untangle other aspects
of our relationship, we wouldn’t be in family court like our
married-but-divorcing counterparts. We’d be in the regular courts,
which are more expensive and take longer. Also, if we split up, we
can’t simply sell the house and split the proceeds. The amount of
money that could change hands between us would be limited by the
cap on tax-free gifts, which is currently $12,000 annually. So I
couldn’t write a check to my partner for more than $12,000 without
getting slapped with a gift tax. It would be mighty hard to
disentangle years of combined finances and assets without more than
12K changing hands in any given year.
But there are a few ways in which our situation is different
from that of same sex couples.
We are not the targets of bigotry and hatred. My
family might think I’m going to hell, and pity my son because he’s
a “bastard”. My neighbors and friends might find our choices
confusing, or even downright wrong. But I’m not receiving death
threats. I can travel freely in the United States and abroad
without fearing for my safety. The level of phobia and hatred
toward LGBT folks far, far exceeds any of the disapproval and
judgement we experience as a straight unmarried couple. With that
said, here are the less significant ways our experiences differ
from LGBT couples.
We both have equal rights as parents of our son.
When our son was only hours old, we were given paperwork in the
hospital with which to legally declare paternity. A slick brochure
encouraged me to name my baby’s daddy, which studies had shown
would help our child “stay in school and avoid crime”. A couple of
signatures, and it was done. My son had two legal parents, and we
had all the attending rights and responsibilities. There was no
second-parent adoption necessary, no testimonials from friends and
relatives to prove our fitness to become parents. It is getting
easier for LGBT folks to become parents, but many, many people
still struggle to have the right to raise children.
We could find ourselves married accidentally. We
live in a common law state. If we don’t take measures to avoid
fulfilling the criteria of common law spouses, we could wake up one
day and find out that we’re legally married whether we like it or
not.
We have the privilege of choosing whether to come out as
unmarried. Unlike your average LGBT couple, we can pass
for a traditional family if we choose to do so. That means we are
constantly making the choice: In this situation, right now, am I
going to exercise my privilege, and just let this person think
we’re a “normal” straight, married couple with one child? Or am I
going to take the opportunity to expose this person to the
idea that there is something inherently unfair about the system of
marriage?
At first, I almost always chose to confront people who assumed we
were married or asked us when the big day was. “We’re not getting
married until my mom and her [female] partner can get married,” I’d
snarl. When I reacted too strongly, it was because I was taking out
my anger at the whole system on folks who simply made the wrong
assumption about my marital status.
These days, I don’t always have the energy to make a ruckus. And
I’ve realized it’s not always the best strategy. I think it’s more
constructive for people (especially people who haven’t been exposed
to the idea of voluntarily abstaining from marriage) to see me as a
happy person, a good parent, and a loving companion to my partner.
If I’ve got a big chip on my shoulder, I’m not going to be able to
instill a positive image of so-called alternative families. My goal
is to plant seeds of doubt about the unequal, sexist, and
heterosexist system of marriage, but that’s a slow, gradual
process. Yelling isn’t going to make it happen any faster.
Luckily, there are a lot of resources out there for LGBT couples
and unmarried straight couples. I lurk on the Alternatives to Marriage Project
listserv. I recently read (and
reviewed) Garrett and Neiman’s excellent book, Money without
matrimony. I
continue to think and write about being unmarried, and would
welcome an ongoing dialog with readers about how unmarried straight
allies of LGBT folks can work to change a system where marriage
comes with a long list of privileges that are not available to
everyone.