If you examine the marriage contract you see that it does not behave like any reasonable contract that people would otherwise sign. There are no clearly defined terms in this contract for what is in fact setting up a business partnership, which is fundamentally what marriages are. Although, yes there are added benefits obviously to a standard business relationship. But getting back to the contract concept. Because there are no clearly defined terms, when the contract is dissolved and the parties go to court the court basically interprets it as it sees fit. Worse, the marriage contract can be altered unilaterally, at any time by the authorities. And worse than that, it is different depending on the jurisdiction where you live. just the physical act of moving can make significant changes to your contract which you probably aren't even aware of. Does this make any sense at all? If you were entering into a standard business relationship with someone would you sign a contract that looked like what I described above? It would seem crazy to me, and it would seem to be ripe for potential for a person who signed it to be "legally" fleeced if the relationship went sour. Now people will talk about how their marriages worked and things turned out great and all that, but let's face it, divorce stats are significant. When you think about the marriage contract there are actually 3 parties involved, the man, the woman... and the state. Again looking at how the contract is constructed, it seems to give one of the parties unreasonable, and in fact, ridiculous powers. And what happens? Well, the lawyer cartel that the government maintains seems to do quite well out of many of these dissolutions. So basically, just looking at how well lawyers do, you can see that these vague contracts are imposing a huge cost on society both in terms of dollars, and productivity that is lost. Is it not time to start getting civilised about this? Can someone tell me why the marriage contract is not the most ridiculous contract ever, totally ripe for abuse? Another aspect of complete reform would be to do away with the ridiculous restriction that only one man and one woman can enter such a contract. The marriage contract as we now it is basically a bronze age anachronism. It's time to start getting civilized about this most fundamental aspect of human society. And no, I'm not married and don't intend to.
It is a bit of an anachronism I'd like to see it updated to deal with the realities of modern life, just like that Telstra contract where you get a new phone every year. GET A NEW SPOUSE EVERY YEAR WITH NEW SPOUSE FEELING Like having the latest spouse? Then get your new eligible smart-spouse on an eligible new 24 month marriage and defacto plan with New Spouse Feeling. After a year, return it in good working order and take up a new eligible spouse when you sign up again on a new eligible 24-month spouse and defacto plan. Then for a little bit extra each month, you can do it all over again the next year. What's more, we've doubled Spouse Upgrade, which means you can now choose between an extra 2 inches of penis or a 3 cup size boost.
I can still only get half a bar with my spouse around the home. I need to go down to the park or the grocery store to get a good signal.
I got married in Greece and still have no idea what I was signing up for. In Australia don't you have a defacto contract after 12 months anyway, so even if you aren't married the gov can still get involved and keep the lawyers in business?
Exactly. That's where the biggest problems come in with a vague contract. The fact is that marriages are business partnerships and should be treated as such, for the benefit of any potential kids that might come along if nothing else. A vague contract is not too bad if there are no kids involved but becomes very serious when there are.
I think you'll find that marriage is not required to receive those benefits. And in fact, many claim that the benefits aren't as good in marriage.
Not sure the intent is to serve as a business contract? If that we're the case, then who in their right mind would get married? Most blokes would agree that the wifey and kids are in fact a financial liability in nearly all cases. No. Marriage is but a mere public declaration of a purely private intent. A ceremony instituted by religion (which easily explains the vague and somewhat shakey definition of terms) which serves only to ease the mind of the inlaws for the intent you are about to serve on their daughter at every given opportunity. :lol: Once this activity ceases to take place, a divorce usually ensues, in which the bride claims her payment based on years of service, with executive-style bonuses for any kids that were produced. Definitely not a business relationship - more like an over-priced service contract.
I'm not sure what this means. Are you saying all financial relationships are "public"? How are we defining private and public here? The point I am trying to make is that what is commonly referred to as marriage and what the reality of marriage is are 2 almost completely seperate ideas. And the fact that so many people are getting into trouble is because we as a society are conspiring to perpetuate the myth to young people rather than show them the reality. And a lot of people are paying a heavy price for the lie. EDIT: I'm guessing that pointing out the nonsense of getting married in today's climate probably gets the back up of a lot of married guys. Especially the ones who claim they have happy marriages (and the much smaller percentage of that number for whom the claim is actually true ). But regardless of whether you are happy or not, the decision was quite mad. That it worked out for you is in spite of the prevailing conditions and not because of them.
I thought shacking up for more than 6 months was considered a legal union for division of spoils by the Family Courts. There's your get out clause: 5 months and 29 days your honour!
To me marriage is where someone incompetent who has nothing meets someone who is competent and has a lot of assets. Fast forward the incompetent person leaves and takes everything the competent person has. The competent person then goes "how the turtle did that happen?" That seems to sum up marriage to me.
What you earn is partly mine, but what I earn I got to keep them all. The kids are non children since they are 1/3 co owned by the government. (i keep wondering where that genes come from?) so the lady get to keep the kids, the man is forced to support pay $, and the govt get to enlist the child in the army when he come of age :0 all this is not good form my silver stacking plan :lol: this is call an extraordinary contract. most of the time people get stuck with it and call it life.
Eddie Murphy had it all figured out at a young age (Language warning) - [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SniOXFhwIZ8[/youtube] Almost 20 years later, forgetting this wisdom cost him $15 million - http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,1090721,00.html His ex then proceeded to lose almost half of that to a con man - http://www.nydailynews.com/entertai...murphy-conned-7-million-feds-article-1.994733 And blew the rest, going into debt - http://hellobeautiful.com/2010/12/28/eddie-murphys-ex-wife-nicole-is-broke All good though, she found a new man, ex-NFL defensive end Michael Strahan. She'd be his third wife. First lasted less than 3 years, produced 2 children, and resulted in $2,500 a month in child support. Second lasted 7 years, produced twins, and resulted in $15 million payable, plus $18,000 a month in child support. His 2nd ex told the judge "that their (at the time 20-month-old) daughters liked "to be accessorized", and that "Isabella doesn't like to leave the house without a purse" and that the children's preferences justified her spending $22,500 on photo shoots, $27,000 on clothing, and $1,700 for sign language classes. (Neither daughter is hearing impaired.)" As his assets were only valued at $22 million at the time, he appealed, and had his sentence reduced. Third in line was Eddy's ex - 5 years later, and they've just split. They didn't actually get married, it was just a really long engagement. Guess he's learnt marriage isn't something you should rush into.
I don't see a financial relationship being the intent in most cases. It means: "We are gathered here today, to publicly declare we intend to be monogamous turtle-buddies, and to have this intent condoned by the church, even though it is none of their business and I'm not really sure why the hell we ever felt the need to have their approval ....."
