Yeah this sort of analysis really requires survey data. As a widowed male, i gained an appreciation of the complexity of things.

I’m not dating someone young enough to be my daughter, so the pool of available women consists of divorcees, widows, long-term single and various flavors of married and dating. Divorced people and widows have strong incentives, as spousal support and survivors benefits for children are contingent on not being married.

Also, if you’re not planning to have children with a partner and have money that’s worth litigating over, (or property that was your late spouse that should go to a child) marriage complicates that.

Yep. I’d be eligible for more government benefits and pay lower taxes if I weren’t married. It would also be easier to set up various aspects of a business such as officers, etc since we would not be considered “related”.

Isn't this all solved by just filing separately, not jointly?

No, for taxes, married filing separately is a different category than single. Married filing separately results in a higher tax bill than married filing jointly for most couples.

Married filed separately effectively locks you out of a lot of benefits when compared to unmarried filing single, or married filing jointly.

Nope. It's a reason some might note get married.

There are places in the tax code where Single != Married Filing Separately.

One pertinent example is that Washington State's capital gains tax applies after $270k per single person, per married couple filing jointly OR split in half for married filing separately. Which could be a theoretical $18.9k/year difference in taxes.

Yeah, that particular deduction reeks of some big brain energy. My family is going to be outta here by the end of the year, hopefully.

- Collapsing two legal entities into effectively one. In the days of the healthcare cartel and other hyperfinancialized shakedowns, this seems like a poor idea. Corpos hire armies of lawyers to create new legal entities so their owners can escape liability. It seems foolish to sign a piece of paper that undermines your main access to that dynamic.

The Sybil attack reigns supreme!