Here was my running joke with my wife for a bit after we got married:
Me: It’s great, now she can’t testify against me!
Wife: Ahem. I can’t be compelled to testify against you. I could always choose to do so.
@kayaker: here’s another vote for getting married. Your benefits will likely outweigh the costs/drawbacks.
The county where we got married (and where we still live) does it all online now – we did need a copy of the marriage certificate a few years ago, and we were able to order a copy from them, without having to go in to the courthouse/county building.
Maybe to put it another way. People with kids can generally relate to other people with kids. Unless they are in the same industry as your daughter or your daughter’s job is super-interesting, most people won’t really give a crap about her job,
Not so in our case. We both talk about it when the topic comes up (someone introduces us as Mr&Ms kayaker). Lately since she is acting as executrix for her aunts estate she is more concerned with the practical aspects.
Current thinking is that since we are updating wills, we should get a marriage license and marry before doing new wills.
I put a new roof on the house and extended the roof to cover a porch. I also paid for a new septic tank. The house/property was paid off at that point so we put everything in both of our names.
Heh. It might shock some readers, but she seldom partakes in cannabis, alcohol (wine) is her drug of choice. The once every few years when she does smoke a bit it she is an extreme lightweight. OTOH, if I am grumpy she will suggest I “take my medicine”.
One other reason to get married is to have the experience of being married. It’s one of life’s significant experiences. If either you or her have never been married, it might be worth getting married just to see what it’s like. From what you said it might not change the relationship or emotional connection between you two, but your friends, relatives, and the world at large will view your relationship in a more significant and meaningful way, and you two may get some happiness from that.
We’ve both experienced marriage in the past , as well as nasty divorces.
Ha. Technically, there are two types of privileges. Communications privilege, which is like attorney-client, and one spouse can prevent the other from testifying about confidential communications made during the marriage. (exceptions exist). The other one is testimonial privilege, which means one spouse cannot be compelled to testify against the other, even about non-confidential communications. This one can be waived by the testifying spouse.
Man, how many times have I seen that sort of thing in the opening lines of a court decision about a contested estate …
Kayaker, you are the doper I most want to hoist a beer with and smoke a doobie with (each having our own top shelf doobie of course)…
I have read your postings more than any one else on the SDMB.
Seems to me, that you and your “better half” are already married in you collective eyes. The two of you seemingly share a beautiful, wonderful life. I suspect you and Ms Kayaker are as commited to each other as any (legally) married couple. Your tax lawyer will give you better advice; I will just kick back and wait for my invitation to a party at you place.
My toast will be with a hoist of Pliny the Younger, followed up with a toast of Pliny the Elder …
When we did Social Security, and I got put on spousal benefits, the instructions said that we had to be able to show our marriage license. When we did it, the SSA clearly had a record of it, because we never got asked to produce it. That’s the only time being married counted so far - work benefits were allowed for domestic partners also, and so they never asked.
I think this thread is long enough that I can now share my reaction whenever I see the thread title: @kayaker, you’re one of my favorite Dopers, but I just can’t marry you. 
The notion that women are more inclined to get married than men is an extremely widely accepted one in today’s culture (e.g. Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) - Wikipedia). Sometimes things can be widely accepted and be false, but the “null hypothesis” is that it’s correct, and I don’t it can be waved away by anecdotal evidence.
The problem is time. People (of both genders, but particularly women) have a “shelf life”. If you put in 10-15 years in a relationship with the expectation that it will lead to marriage and eventually come to realize that it never will, you can’t just back out and go back to the same position that you were in prior to that relationship.
People have a “shelf life” if they want to have children. If you just want companionship and someone to sit with at Applebee’s every Friday, you can do that pretty much forever. My dad’s almost 80 and he started dating a few years after Mom passed away.
The thing is, people change over time. Sure you “love” the person now. What about in 5, 10, 20 years time when you are both different people? How much do you put up with someone’s bullshit just because you signed a contract in your late 20s/early 30s?
But I’m probably the last person anyone should ask for relationship advice.
Yeah, my grandmother turned down several men after she was widowed, including one in her nineties.
That’s why we have divorce as an option.
The OP and his girlfriend already have considerable sunk costs in this relationship. Dissolving their partnership at this point, given their joint property, has the potential to be as messy as any divorce. They’ve been together a long time and apparently intend to continue the arrangement. Under the circumstances, getting married is making official a state of affairs that already exist, with potential legal and/or other benefits.
Exactly!
Children are part of it but not nearly all of it. The pool of “eligible and desireable” potential relationship partners shrinks considerably as people age.
What people are looking for is someone who is marriage/long-term relationship material but not currently in a marriage/long term relationship. Between, say, the early 20s and the late 30s, that pool shrinks enormously (and so on for other gaps). So if you enter into a relationship in your early 20s and end it in your late 30s, you are not in remotely the same position as you were in terms of finding a new partner.
Before I met my gf I was in two relationships that could have gone on for a longer time. Both women had been married before and specifically stated initially that hey were not looking to get married again. In both cases, somewhere between 10 and 12 months in, they told me they changed their minds and wanted to marry me. In both cases I broke things off. I still speak with each of them, they are both married.
/anecdote
I have first hand experience with exactly what you described. It was NOT a pleasant one.
My father left everything to my brother (whose name was joint with my father on everything…house, car, bank accounts, etc) and stated my brother would then split everything evenly among all four of us.
His reasoning was my brother got along with his 3 sisters, my brother was male (father was an old school Italian) which made him capable of these things.
Brother died suddenly and unexpectedly 5 weeks after Dad.
Guess what we got? Right…nothing! And it was all legal. Nothing we could do.
My father-in-law was dating at 100 - a woman older than he was.
As for if women want to get married, the reason I asked for demographics is that I accept that in many parts of the country this is definitely true. But it isn’t nearly so true in others and for some classes of women. I don’t think the declining marriage rate is all due to men.