Tax Benefits
- Filing joint income tax returns with the IRS and state taxing authorities.
- Creating a "family partnership" under federal tax laws, which allows you to divide business income among family members.
Estate Planning Benefits
- Inheriting a share of your spouse's estate.
- Receiving an exemption from both estate taxes and gift taxes for all property you give or leave to your spouse.
- Creating life estate trusts that are restricted to married couples, including QTIP trusts, QDOT trusts, and marital deduction trusts.
- Obtaining priority if a conservator needs to be appointed for your spouse -- that is, someone to make financial and/or medical decisions on your spouse's behalf.
Government Benefits
- Receiving Social Security, Medicare, and disability benefits for spouses.
- Receiving veterans' and military benefits for spouses, such as those for education, medical care, or special loans.
- Receiving public assistance benefits.
Employment Benefits
- Obtaining insurance benefits through a spouse's employer.
- Taking family leave to care for your spouse during an illness.
- Receiving wages, workers' compensation, and retirement plan benefits for a deceased spouse.
- Taking bereavement leave if your spouse or one of your spouse's close relatives dies.
Medical Benefits
- Visiting your spouse in a hospital intensive care unit or during restricted visiting hours in other parts of a medical facility.
- Making medical decisions for your spouse if he or she becomes incapacitated and unable to express wishes for treatment.
Death Benefits
- Consenting to after-death examinations and procedures.
- Making burial or other final arrangements.
Family Benefits
- Filing for stepparent or joint adoption.
- Applying for joint foster care rights.
- Receiving equitable division of property if you divorce.
- Receiving spousal or child support, child custody, and visitation if you divorce.
Housing Benefits
- Living in neighborhoods zoned for "families only."
- Automatically renewing leases signed by your spouse.
Consumer Benefits
- Receiving family rates for health, homeowners', auto, and other types of insurance.
- Receiving tuition discounts and permission to use school facilities.
- Other consumer discounts and incentives offered only to married couples or families.
Other Legal Benefits and Protections
- Suing a third person for wrongful death of your spouse and loss of consortium (loss of intimacy).
- Suing a third person for offenses that interfere with the success of your marriage, such as alienation of affection and criminal conversation (these laws are available in only a few states).
- Claiming the marital communications privilege, which means a court can't force you to disclose the contents of confidential communications between you and your spouse during your marriage.
- Receiving crime victims' recovery benefits if your spouse is the victim of a crime.
- Obtaining immigration and residency benefits for noncitizen spouse.
- Visiting rights in jails and other places where visitors are restricted to immediate family.
(Source: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/marriage-rights-benefits-30190.html)
We discussed yesterday whether marriage was a just institution. The big question seems to be not whether marriage as an institution is just, but rather if it is implemented justly. With all of these benefits available to people who choose to be recognized as a married couple, those who are not allowed to marry are treated unfairly. As Sarah said in class, there needs to be a radical look into why we allow the people we allow to marry. The institution seems to perpetuate very traditional views of marriage and relationships and if the essays we read had viable data they create asymmetric relationships.
I think the ability to marry in itself is not unjust: we need ways to regulate the legal and economic rights listed above. However, the expectations attached to marriage (women growing up, in the marriage itself) do harm people. What do you think a solution for these sorts of problems are?
I think marriage would be a just institution if all people were allowed to join in it rather than just a certain group. However, I think the main injustices in marriage lie in what happens when the marriage ends. There are a multitude of cases where the women are given preferential treatment to the men and the men are burdened for the rest of their life with unjust financial compensation in terms of child support and alimony.
ReplyDeleteA more concrete example, however, is in the case of Reber v. Reiss, a suit handled in Pennsylvania. In this case, the couple had gone through IVF after discovering the wife had cancer under the knowledge that the chemo and other treatments might affect her ability to procreate. The treatment rendered her infertile. After two years, in 2006, the couple divorced.
After Reber, the husband, had a child in 2008 in a different relationship. After this, Reiss, the ex-wife, filed for possession of the prefertilized embryos in attempts to have children of her own (outside of any relationship).
The state originally filed in favor of Reber to have the embryos destroyed, but Reiss appealed and the court ruled in favor of her, saying that "ordinarily the party wishing to avoid procreation should prevail, in our balancing of the facts unique to this case, we find that Wife’s inability to achieve biological parenthood without the use of the pre-embryos is an interest which outweighs Husband’s desire to avoid procreation."
The court dismissed the legally binding IVF agreement signed by both parties that required the destruction of the embryos after separation. Furthermore, they did not, in their ruling, deny Reiss the ability to file for child support from Reber.
In summation, I want to ask, how is it fair for Reber that the court decided to dismiss a legally binding contract signed by both parties about the destruction of embryos, and possibly make him pay child support for a child conceived out of marriage that he never agreed to have (with legal protection), only to be told he has to just deal with it because his ex-wife's desire for procreation outweighs his desire to not procreate?
Source: http://www.pacases.com/?p=245
All those benefits seem very appealing, with that said I can see how all those benefits can be very rigid especially that most of them have to do with financial benefits. I don't believe that marriage shouldn't be an option but perhaps letting human beings whoever they are get married to each other. So I agree in that marriage isn't really unjust, but the benefits being available to ONLY married people is unjust. But if that's the case how would be give those benefits to people if we completely ruled it out.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that we can change the outlook of marriage over night but it does change with time. So I recently read an article about pre-marriage cohabitation and it stated that, "Cohabitation in the United States has increased by more than 1,500 percent in the past half century. In 1960, about 450,000 unmarried couples lived together. Now the number is more than 7.5 million. " so through this we can see that the attitudes about marriage are changing and thus with time those problems might dissolve themself?!
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/the-downside-of-cohabiting-before-marriage.html?_r=4&pagewanted=all