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<p>[WLS</a> 890AM](<a href=“http://www.wlsam.com/Article.asp?id=2299320&spid=]WLS”>http://www.wlsam.com/Article.asp?id=2299320&spid=)</p>
<p>Why not? This sounds like a pretty good idea to me.</p>
<p>How very short sighted and sad. For those children whose parents decided that it wasn’t blissful enough to work at staying together. I see this as backfiring on women and children.</p>
<p>Why bother with an intermediate between living together and being married? What’s the point of it?</p>
<p>It’s an interesting (but not new) idea. That article leaves out all the important details though - what happens to joint property, assets accumulated during the marriage, children, etc.</p>
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Marriage provides a host of legal and financial benefits. Presumably people in a short-term marriage would still receive these.</p>
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<p>Boy - I could see a lot of gaming of the system on that one. People getting a temporary license to get access to health insurance is the first one that comes to my mind.</p>
<p>Oh My! What next?! ROFL</p>
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Being married makes you financially independent from your parents for financial aid. </p>
<p>Think anyone would take advantage of this, with a clear, no muss-no fuss way to get out of the marriage in 3 or 4 years?</p>
<p>Nah. 
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<p>It would be a nice option to have in the event of pregnancy. A couple who wanted to provide for their child but were unsure about long-term prospects for togetherness could opt for the interim approach, without facing the prospect of an expensive and stressful divorce if it didn’t work out. Presumably if they entered the marriage with only a short-term commitment, they would come to agreement at the outset concerning the type of issues that typically are litigated in a divorce setting, such as division of property, child custody, etc.</p>
<p>^^Its funny this is posted on the College forum. The biggest loople, as nre posted above is to be independent for FA applications. Just imagine how many more needed base scholarships have to be granted? And how many HS Jr. will be married and don’t actually “live” together? For the cost over $200K for two in 4 years, people will do any thing they can to get it.</p>
<p>What’s next? A temporary marriage with a prenup? This whole notion is ridiculous. Either commit or dont. Period.</p>
<p>Folks, this was proposed in Mexico City. Do you really see a stream of American 17 yos headed to Mexico to get temporarily married so they can get independent FA? :)</p>
<p>Not sure I’m crazy about a “learner’s permit” for marriage. Being married is always a learning process…</p>
<p>Actually, I think it might be an interesting idea to try, but I think it should have restrictions on it, much as learners permits and first driving licenses have limits on them. Here would be my thought:</p>
<p>-It can only apply to a couple without kids, if a couple has kids, they should get married, to make sure the kids are legally taken care of and assets are split, to protect the kids.</p>
<p>-If the couple splits up, assets they brought into the ‘temporary’ marriage would be theirs, and anything they got during the relationship would be 50-50, period (unless the couple chose to split it another way).</p>
<p>-During the marriage, for things like health insurance and taxes and such, the couple is married. If they dissolve the temporary marriage, then things like health insurance is no longer shared, no different then if a DP couple splits up.</p>
<p>-It should have a time limit on it, maybe 3 years, with one renewal possible. </p>
<p>-If the couple has kids when covered by this, it automatically becomes ‘full marriage’ and requires a divorce, again to protect the kids. </p>
<p>Maybe having something like this, where it is easy to dissolve i.e no lawyer or anything else needed, would give people incentive to try living together in a legally recognized relationship and give them space to figure out if they want it permanent. Especially for younger people (every study on marriage shows that marrying really young is a recipe for a broken marriage, people who marry young are way more likely to split up then people who are older), it would give them a chance to ‘test the water’ without the full committment…and by limiting how long they can do this, it will force hesitators to make up their minds…</p>
<p>I had one person who argued that this would leave the wife defenseless and such, but in the case of childless couples I think that argument is pretty out of date. Yeah, back in the good old days when a wife was supposed to quit work and stay home, that might be true, but today most women work outside the home and with young couples young women are at parity with their other, or maybe make more, so it isn’t like there is some major dependency there, with a spouse who hasn’t worked, doesn’t have means…</p>
<p>One of the things about the whole ‘til death do us part’ and so forth is that the idea of lifelong marriage was done at a time when people died young, average age of death in biblical times was maybe 32 years or so, so marriages didn’t last that long, even given marrying young. Not saying long term marriage isn’t possible (I am up to 23 years myself), just that it may be good to recognize the realities of marriage and find ways to make it work better.</p>
<p>^I would add the stipulation that the couple be required to attend a marriage class on a regular basis. I think most people have very unrealistic expectations about what marriages should look like, hence, the high divorce rate. I’ve been married 22 years. My husband and I actually separated for six months about 4 years ago and then got back together. I’m convinced had we known what we know now (after 4 years of regular counseling) we would have never come to the brink. Part of it is developing better communication skills, working together to establish mutual goals and activities but a much larger part is about understanding that marriage is hard, it requires putting up with a lot you don’t like in your partner, it requires sacrificing for the good of the marriage and not just worrying about your own happiness. It requires understanding that every status - married or divorce comes with its own challenges and often, by divorcing, or divorcing and remarrying, you are simply trading in one set of problems for another.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t like the idea of a temporary marriage license. Marriage is about being committed and knowing your partner is committed to the marriage. There is zero way to make a marriage work if one or both partners have one foot out the door at all times. That’s part of the reason that people who live together before marriage are much more likely to divorce.</p>
<p>How is this different than living together for 2 years?</p>
<p>I had read about this several years ago for Iran. there it is a safety factor. if they had this in the US it seems to me that if your were ‘married’ for 2 years and hitting some low times then you may call it quits if the contract was up. but if you were living together and you did not have to make the decision to renew you may be more likely to stay together in the rough times.</p>