Just a Piece of Paper

It’s very common for couples to live together without marriage.  They often say marriage is just a piece of paper.  They do not need it.  That piece of paper confers a bundle of rights, far more rights than I am going to spew forth here today, but here are some.

Imagine a young couple, happily cohabitating, and they have a baby.  Dad doesn’t have any rights because the unmarried mother of a child in Florida has ALL the rights.  The father’s name on a birth certificate does not establish paternity or confer rights.  A Department of Financial Services child support order does not even establish rights.  For a father to have rights he must have been married to the mother when the child was born or go to court and get an order of paternity.

Let’s stay with our young couple, with their little child and let us imagine one of them dies in a car accident and it’s not their fault.  A claim is pursued, the result of which is a lot of money.  Who gets the money?  The little child.  When does the child receive the money?  When he or she turns 18.  What happens in the meantime?  The surviving parent has to figure out how to raise that child on his or her income.  If they are lucky they also receive social security dependency benefits paid on behalf of the deceased parent. 

Wipe the slate clean, we’re back with our young couple and now imagine Mom dies, abandons or goes to jail.  Who gets that child?  It won’t necessarily be Dad because this child has no legal father. 

What happens if, in the case of our young couple, the biological father is Mom’s boyfriend, but Mom is married to another?  Who is the baby’s father?  The mother’s husband.  The Husband would get to pursue the wrongful death action and he would get the money too, because he is the husband.  Husband also has the rights to the baby, because he is the legal father.  Now maybe you are asking, but why would he want that?  What if there is a million dollar wrongful death case?

Imagine your average unmarried couple living together.  One dies.  The one who died owned the house and had the most money.  He or she did not have a will.  The survivor is SOL.  That will is also “just” a piece of paper.

Let’s stick with this scenario and add a two year old to the mix.  The couple had a two year old.  Who inherits the house and money?  The two year old.  But the two year doesn’t have the capacity or money to probate the estate or pay for his or her new home.  Who gets to do that?  Probably the surviving parent if they care enough to preserve the asset for their child.  He or she gets to spend their own money to get the assets put in their two year old’s name.  The two year old’s money gets locked in a guardianship to protect the minor child.  This is a terrible result for the surviving parent.   All these scenarios are terrible for the survivor, which is the whole point of this blog post.

Oftentimes senior citizens don’t want to get married.  They have children from previous marriages to whom they want to leave their assets.  Very frequently step-parents and adult children do not get along, why create the headache?  But what happens if a senior couple has been living together for a decade when one of them gets dementia.  In steps an adult child who gets guardianship and takes over the demented parent’s life, no more cohabitation.  Oh well, perhaps it’s all for the best.  Personally, I think better to plan your life yourself. 

Imagine an unmarried couple who have lived together for 30 years.  One dies in an accident, the result of the negligence of another.  The survivor has zero rights to pursue a claim because under the Florida Wrongful Death Act to benefit you must be a minor child or surviving spouse to receive damages for the loss.

Contrast this with the married couple where the spouse who has all the money gets angry at the spouse who doesn’t so he or she writes a will leaving the survivor nothing and then dies.  Guess what?  The surviving spouse is entitled to a spousal share because the law protects him or her.  You can’t disinherit your spouse, absent a signed nuptial agreement which is, once again, “just” a piece of paper.

And then there are survivor benefits:  social security, VA, pensions, etc. 

You ask why the law doesn’t protect people better.  Do unmarried couples want laws binding them to each other?  We abolished common law marriage in Florida in the 1960s.  I wonder why people do not protect themselves and each other?