13 Huge Reasons Marriage Is Critical to U.S. Society, Part 1

Marriage — to some, it’s an agreement; to others, it’s a religious ceremony with civil implications. To the government, ‘marriage ‘ is an enormous convenience; it’s a way to package up a huge number of what would otherwise be a huge number of legally tedious individual contracts and turn them into a single piece of paper: the marriage certificate.  What kinds of tedium does a marriage contract help avoid? Here’s a not-at-all-comprehensive list of what a marriage contract means for two people that is hopefully a bit eye-opening.

Federal Health and Welfare Programs
Social Security, SSI Disability, SNAP (food stamps), TANF (welfare), unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA (Obamacare) — all of the major Federal health and welfare programs have unique benefits provided for married couples. In some cases, marriage will change the amount of a benefit; in others, it ‘only’ allows spouses to look at and modify paperwork for the other spouse (but that alone is a huge deal, as anyone who has filled out a form for a sick or injured spouse can attest!)

Veteran’s Benefits
Pensions, life insurance, medical care, funerary services, tuition benefits, housing benefits, and more — being the spouse of a military veteran means a lot of things that being the live-in-friend-with-benefits absolutely doesn’t.

Taxes
The “Married filing (joint/separate)ly” options are simply unavailable to couples that aren’t married — and filing jointly gives you the biggest automatic deduction the IRS offers to anyone, anywhere. Filing under any “married” option opens up access to a number of secondary benefits, including the Earned Income Tax Credit, the American Opportunity Learning Credit, the Child and Dependent Tax Credit, and more.

Federal Service Benefits
If either spouse is currently working as, or is retired from, a job as a federal officer or employee, an elected Federal official, a civilian position in the Armed Forces, or a judge, the various health, retirement, survivorship, insurance, and vacation benefits extend to the other spouse as well.

Employment Benefits
Federal law requires that employers offer benefit plans that take an employee’s spouse, if any, into account. Most obviously, this applies to health insurance benefits, but also includes maternity leave (and paternity leave at sufficiently advanced businesses), leave to care for a seriously ill spouse, and other less-common benefits as well.

Naturalization and Immigration
Special consideration is offered to spouses of American citizens, but of perhaps even more importance is the consideration offered to the spouses of immigrant aliens who come into the country under employment or other visas, and those who enter under political asylum.

That’s unfortunately all we have space for this week, but come back next week and we’ll finish our list and explain why it’s important.