I have been through all the scary parts of protecting my assets through my wife’s illness and deaths. The question is should you re marry? Should an illness or age related event happen, Are you better off with a will or trust than to be married and have to fight the community property grab by the government and health care agencies
NO FRICKEN WAY!!!!!!!!!!!
As a boomer hippy generation I am good not being married. As they say make love not war. But there is a culture that thinks marriage is an important thing what that is I don’t know. Love and marriage have nothing to do with each other.
And one that both parties should seriously think about.
there are/ can be financial ramifications.
If a person is getting benefits from the VA and remarries I think the benefits stop.
There are other cases where a benefit may stop if the person remarries.
You should have a Will, married or not.
Trusts are good if you want to avoid probate and have family that you want to pass "things" to.
I doubt seriously if I would ever marry again. I find that after this long it would be hard to share space. I think I am set in my ways.
And I don't think anyone wants to hear me snap, crackle, pop walking across the floor in the morning.
1) It would be ‘living in sin’ to cohabit without marriage? Current Christian marriage ceremonies are very different from those at the time of the Bible, and those in other countries now. What makes our current legal ceremonies so ‘moral’?
2) You want to make a public commitment? You can have a party or a special function, inviting anyone you want, dressing up any way you want, and making it as formal as you want. That’s more or less what most weddings are now! You can call it your ‘wedding’, and the chances are that many people won’t remember the difference - particularly if someone ‘runs’ it and looks like a Marriage Celebrant.
3) You want to make some sort of commitment to God? My guess is that if you talk to a Minister of Religion (particularly in a less formal church), they can sort out with you a private commitment ceremony which does not meet the requirements for a legal union – which doesn’t have much to do with God anyway.
4) You want the legal consequences of being ‘genuinely’ married – which is what many people DON’T want! See a lawyer, make a list of the ‘consequences’ you want, and ask for other ways to get those consequences – and not the others.
Think it through! I remarried at age 54. I wouldn’t do it again now age 76 if my DH died.
Hubby was a widower when I met him, we have a lot in common, same financial thinking which is so very important. We keep our funds separate. We both have separate Revocable Trusts, and the rest of the alphabet soup legal documents. We laugh about how fugal and cheap we are.
Hubby has two grown children, I never could have children so having "grown/married with children" step-children has been interesting. I've learned to keep out the fray, and only give advice to the step-children when they ask. If they listen.
We both are aging at the same rate, the same age. And life is so much more comfortable knowing there is someone in the household that has your back in an emergency. I don't want to be like that lady in Life Alert commercial who had fallen down the basement stairs with her laundry basket, on the floor for days.
If any happens to hubby and he is no longer around, I would sell the house and move into a 55+ community that has assistant living/memory care on-site.
Women marrying older men in Florida is very prevalent and it can get real messy as many of these women are scammers for money.
I never commingled my money. He supports us and never wanted any part of my assets. Neither of us was poor. Because we're married, I'll receive his military pension when he's gone. Also his other assets are in trust to benefit me for the rest of my life, and after that his adult kids inherit. I won't need to touch the principal. We financially partially support his sister, who isn't well and who helped him when he was working his way through college. This was my idea, and he enthusiastically agreed.
We live in a community property state and each had our own lawyer prepare our estate plans. For us, the benefits of marrying were more than not marrying. If I'd chosen not to marry him, I'd still choose to be his caregiver - but I wouldn't have the financial benefits of being married. I feel honored and loved, and he does too.
Marriage should always be decided on a case by case basis and with the advice of an attorney who can point out theoretical disastrous scenarios and make it clear how to avoid them.
Also in some cases it’s not beneficial financially to be married.
And like others and myself said , some would just avoid it to avoid grief from step relatives.
I don't think I would want to make this commitment to anyone else. So no I would never marry again.
met at 17 . We are 59 and I know I would never remarry .
My grandmother was a widow at 64. About 5 years later, she had a companion , went on dinner dates , they did not live together . She also told me she refused sex . She just wanted a companion. Then he started talking marriage so she broke it off , she never dated again after that.
The wife convinced my father in law that all the adult children should be equal beneficiaries in his will . She had three children , my father in law only had two .
She died and my husband was POA for his father . He got criticism from two of the steps for the amount of father in laws money being spent to pay for assisted living for his father . They wanted to preserve inheritance .
My husband dealt with all the difficulties of dealing with his father with dementia who was not understanding that he wasn’t able to live alone . Meanwhile two of these steps would agree with the old man and just make him more difficult and resistant to help with hygiene and incontinence care, in order to try to prove to us that he didn’t belong in assisted living .
So now he died. And since the will states everything is split 5 ways between her 3 adult kids and my father in laws 2 adult kids , her side of the family ends up with 60 % of my father in laws money . We don’t understand why he didn’t split it 50% to her side and 50% to his own side. That would have been more than fair to her side since most of the money was his , IMO.
Don’t get married . It’s too late to commingle money at this point .
I am 74 and I would not remarry. Couples I know have done well living together and living in separate homes. My Uncle and GF kept their homes, dated and traveled together. There does become a problem when he has his kids and she has hers. You need to protect what assets you have for your kids and/or future care. In some instances, a child is made POA for a parent. When the parent gets sick, they pull the parent out of the marital home leaving the other spouse to fend for themselves. Money should not be co-mingled. For me, stay single, a lot less headaches. Learn to be by yourself.
I'd say just do the friends with benefits route.
Companionship is morw why people date in their older age and get into romantic relationships. Or because they were married for a long time and can't adapt to life alone.
Many men have like yourself smartly protected their assets during their spouse's illness or if they were placed. Getting remarried means re-doing all of that.
Then there's the issue of greedy, grown children. If the people getting remarried are seniors who have already built lives and assets with a different spouse, co-mingling these assets could be troublesome in states that have community property laws.
For example:
You remarry a woman with grown kids. You pass away. Your wife of course inherits half your estate even of you don't have a will. Then her kids inherit from her.
I know a couple who married when the husband was in his 60's in excellent, robust health and she was in her 40's . He had never had kids, but he was very close to his family (brothers and their kids). He died quickly after they married. Now this woman had zilch and came to her new husband's house basically barefoot and hungry with a string of low-down, freeloading relatives. Then her three adult, loser kids from three different fathers moved in. She inherited his entire estate. His family got nothing.
The woman died of alcoholism a couple years later. Her adult kids took it all. Got her husband's house, his cars, his bank accounts, insurance, etc... because he didn't have time to make a Will. She made one the second she married him.
Don't get remarried when you're a senior citizen. It's not worth the headache of separating and protecting assets. You can get something legal stating that your domestic partner gets what you want them to get and this will protect you from communal property laws.
I don’t think it is necessary for seniors to remarry at that late stage. Keep finances separate.
I have thought about whether I would ever remarry should my husband pass before me. And I think my answer is "It depends". It depends upon whether he has adult children and how nice and wise they are. I know my sons would "play nice" with "steppies" because I'd make a huge effort to educate them. I currently have a very close friend who is going through this now. Her Mom's husband is in hospice and he has 4 adult daughters. Her own Mom is in the same facility with dementia and memory loss and her brother is the PoA. For now everyone is playing nice, thankfully. But I've read posts on this forum (many, many posts) where late-life blended families are just in chaos.
I think the government and healthcare agencies are the least of one's problems in remarrying since there are legal solutions for this (PoAs, trusts, Wills). For the record, Medicaid doesn't grab anything it isn't actually legitimately owed. Remember, we the taxpayers are funding Medicaid. Healthcare agencies aren't charities -- they should be reimbursed for the care they provide. This is moral and ethical and reasonable.
Trust me you won't be 'educating' anyone on anything because when it comes to money people go crazy. Especially when it's a parent and they think a new spouse or that person's kids is going to come after it.
Marriage is for one of two reasons, or both.
1) People are young and they want to build a life, assets, and a family with someone
2) It's financially beneficial to marry
People who have already built their lives and assets don't need to re-do it. It always causes problems when it's seniors.
I remarried my second husband recently. We got back together and it was certainly financially beneficial for me to remarry. We share property and a business together.