“If we have a kid, we shouldn’t split up even if we’re a little unhappy”
Yes; the kid increases the cost of splitting up, so being a little unhappy doesn’t justify making the kid really unhappy. You don’t need a marriage for this, you just need to think about the situation for five minutes.
“If I’ve quit my job to be a homemaker, don’t stop giving me money without warning”.
Pay partially into an account that is available to the homemaker and not you; with a month’s head start the account will have enough to pay out to the homemaker for at least a month. This is equivalent to a month’s warning. It took me like fifteen seconds to think of this and it’s already better than the equivalent financial situation within a marriage.
There are just better ways of doing everything marriage needs to do, except installing a huge cost on leaving, so it seems duplicitous to prefer marriage to these other ways if you ostensibly only care aout the other things.
Yes; the kid increases the cost of splitting up, so being a little unhappy doesn’t justify making the kid really unhappy. You don’t need a marriage for this, you just need to think about the situation for five minutes.
Pay partially into an account that is available to the homemaker and not you; with a month’s head start the account will have enough to pay out to the homemaker for at least a month. This is equivalent to a month’s warning. It took me like fifteen seconds to think of this and it’s already better than the equivalent financial situation within a marriage.
There are just better ways of doing everything marriage needs to do, except installing a huge cost on leaving, so it seems duplicitous to prefer marriage to these other ways if you ostensibly only care aout the other things.