There really should be no financial benefit to marriage. It becomes a coercive force that encourages people to marry and stay married, even though they may not want to.
DINK is on its way from being a nice bonus to baseline entry criteria if you want to live within public transit range of a job.
That doesn't require marriage, per se, but something that looks a lot like it.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/16/upshot/marria...
Spread the word!
https://apeopleschoice.com/common-law-marriage-in-california...
You can also file married income taxes if you are legally married in your state of residence. In fact, if you didn't it probably would be considered tax fraud.
Family health insurance plans
Unlimited tax free inheritance
Spousal social security and pension
Social security survivors benefits
The love aspect of it does not and should not have to do with the legal aspect. At the end of the day, putting food on the table and a roof over your kids' heads is life's priority, so finding a partner who can assist with that is understandably a prerequisite before any of this love/compatibility stuff can be built on top.
I think it would have saved us both a ton of trouble, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings.
but I'm not sure how much flexibility you have in deciding the (legal) penalties for breaking those informal expectations etc.
I imagine the terms of a marriage contract are defined by each state, as sort of a take-it-or-leave-it contract.
There might be ways to hedge, like prenuptial agreements. However (and not exactly the same thing), I recently spoke with a corporate attorney regarding company protections in the unfortunate case something happened to one of the company founders under various scenarios (e.g. if a company founder gets married and dies within 5 years of incorporation, is there a way to require the spouse to sell those shares back to the company, rather than them owning a controlling stake). Prenuptial agreements were brought-up, and my attorney basically said, "yeah those exist, and are an option, an expensive option, but in a legal battle, pffft, don't expect a prenup to be your pocket ace."
Not really; its sometimes referred to as a contract, but legally the law of contracts doesn't apply either in formation of marriages, or when the expectations associated with marriage are broken.
Marriage is somewhat analogous to a legal partership (especially in common law jurisdictions, where merely behaving as if it existed can cause it to legally exist.)
Not necessarily 'stay married' because for many people there's a financial incentive to get divorced. And you can't get divorced if you don't get married in the first place.