Should Marriage have an expiration date?

[Dju]

Source:www.iol.co.za/news/world/marriage-expiration-date-causes-stir-1.1152935

A proposal in Mexico City for marriage contracts with minimum durations of two years has raised eyebrows and prompted an outcry from the Catholic Church and conservative politicians.

Alright, this made me think a lot, so I thought it would make a fun discussion here at the NTWF! Do you think marriage should have an expiration date that can be renewed by the couple or be automatically expired every 2 years?

When I come to think of it, this totally takes the "compromise" thing away from the marriage, and even the romantic part as well. BUT if you get married and your husband/wife show a dark side with psychotic and possessive traits, then I think it could be a good solution...so I haven't picked a side yet. XD

So what about you, friend? :3

[Deleted]

=/ That defeats the purpose of marriage.

My sister's wedding was a couple of days ago and it was beautiful and wonderful to see her and Michael make vows to one another to 'love and cherish' one another for the rest of their lives. The enormity and weight of these vows has already lost some of its importance, what with the high divorce rate of silly people rushing in to get married without considering that marriage constitutes a lifelong commitment to be with each other 'until death do us part'. To have an expiration date for marriage is, in my opinion, only encouraging that kind of idiotic non-commitment.

Do you really want to tell the one you love on your wedding day "Until two years do us part"?

[gold]

I don't see how it can even be called marriage if it has an expiration date. I agree with what Sarn said.

[Komori]

Automatic expirations? Nah, I wouldn't want another thing to keep track of. I was within two days of letting my driver's license expire, I'm pretty sure I'd be hairbrained enough to forget to renew a marriage license as well. :B

Besides, what's really the difference between an expired marriage and a divorce anyway?

[Deleted]

No. Marriage was invented so that two people could be in a relationship for life and not have to worry. It's sort of a stable ground. Plus, financial support and things you get legally with a marriage should stick around forever, especially if the couple is planning on children.

The expiration, to me, seems like a heartbreaker and a family splitter. Two people shouldn't have to go through marriage again just so they can keep supporting themselves and their children.

EDIT: Also, if marriage turns out badly, that's what divorce is for. And a forceful spouse would just force you to renew the marriage anyway, so it doesn't solve any problem.

[Cow-winkle]

I'm not a fan of the argument that "It's unromantic, therefore it's bad." It's the same argument that's sometimes used against prenuptial agreements, and I don't find it very convincing.

That said, I'm with Komori on this one; having to renew your marriage like you'd renew a driver's license just seems needlessly complicated. At least with driver's licenses, there are good reasons to have a system where they need to be renewed, like having the picture or vision requirements updated. But do the slower reaction times and poor vision that come with old age suddenly make you a worse spouse?

I suppose you could argue that divorces can be messy and difficult, but if you're so certain that your marriage is going to end that you're just going to build it into the contract, why bother getting married in the first place?

Stupid question: Are there cultures or sub-cultures where people typically get married to several different people over the course of a lifetime, but not to more than one person at a time? That's the one situation in which I could imagine these contracts being useful. If you can find a good reason to have an intentionally temporary marriage, I'd say go for it, but I don't think it's for me.

[Huntress]

I can... sort of see upsides for it. Divorces aren't always an easy thing to do. People get comfortable in a relationship, fail to see issues with it, think that it'll get better or is supposed to be as difficult as it is, anything like that. If it had an expiration date, it'd make people rethink and analyse their marriage every couple years. "So we have the revalidation date coming up. We still good? Love each other? Going in a good direction? Not fighting all the time and making each other miserable? Alright, we're carrying on with this." So people would actually do something with their unhappy marriage instead of whittling away in their miserable status quo and wasting their lives.

'course, the opposite side has a whole lot of points to consider as well. For starters, two years feels wa-ay too short a timespan. Marriages hit their first rocks justabout within the first two to five years, so if the expiry date arrives at the same time, it'd be too easy to just call quits there and then in the heat of emotions and then regret it and swing right back, and that just makes the whole concept of marriage rather banal. And then there's the lifetime commitment aspect already mentioned, yep. Too easy to make it a "let's give it a shot and if it doesn't work, it'll be over in two years anyway".

Although on the flipside of that, anyone who thinks it doesn't work can and will divorce anyway, with or without the expiration date. So it wouldn't really affect people like those one way or another. (Word of wisdom, folks, you can't enter a relationship to see if it'll work out. You have to make it work out.)

And then there's the question of whose business it is to regulate people's lives to this extent. I'd be pretty happy to get to analyse my marriage every couple of years, but I'd quite like to have the freedom to do it myself, not because the state tells me to. (Assuming I'm not in a stale statusquo-y marriage that sinks people into apathy. The expiration date would really help for those people, IMO, but the question of state meddling is in there all the same.)

Frankly, if the expiration is there at all, I'd set it at ten years or so. Long enough to still make people think whether or not to make the commitment, long enough to allow for the building up of some sort of a stable marriage for better or for worse, and a nice long timespan to look back on and analyse. And after ten years, renewing the vows can already be a nice symbolic milestone-ceremony.

[Deleted]

Nov 7, 2011 1:37:08 GMT -5 Cow-winkle said:

I'm not a fan of the argument that "It's unromantic, therefore it's bad." It's the same argument that's sometimes used against prenuptial agreements, and I don't find it very convincing.

That said, I'm with Komori on this one; having to renew your marriage like you'd renew a driver's license just seems needlessly complicated. At least with driver's licenses, there are good reasons to have a system where they need to be renewed, like having the picture or vision requirements updated. But do the slower reaction times and poor vision that come with old age suddenly make you a worse spouse?

I suppose you could argue that divorces can be messy and difficult, but if you're so certain that your marriage is going to end that you're just going to build it into the contract, why bother getting married in the first place?

Stupid question: Are there cultures or sub-cultures where people typically get married to several different people over the course of a lifetime, but not to more than one person at a time? That's the one situation in which I could imagine these contracts being useful. If you can find a good reason to have an intentionally temporary marriage, I'd say go for it, but I don't think it's for me.

My argument has very little to do with romance, it's about accepted social norms - fidelity to one's spouse over the course of a lifetime in order to enrich each other and provide a stable environment in which to raise offspring. I won't deny that, as a Christian and a romantic to boot, I hold a very high opinion of marriage, but even setting that aside, I see no point in this prospect. If you're going to sign your names on a binding legal contract with the person you're supposed to love, you're going to want it to be for life.

You make a good point - only an idiot is going to go get married knowing they'll end up getting divorced in two years.

I wouldn't be against the implementation of a legal contract similar to that of a civil union but which only runs for a certain period of time for those whose situation calls for that kind of officialism. Say if a relative or friend steps in to help raise children of a broken marriage and they want to make everything as official as possible so there can't be any dispute over money and stuff like that. But again, even that seems a little pointless and I can't imagine a lot of people wanting to pay money for that kind of thing.

[Enn]

People get married for all sorts of reasons, and whilst love and romance and committment are usually involved, there are plenty of marriages for tax or benefit reasons, there's marriages for the sake of children, marriage for the sake of appearances, arranged marriages, all kinds of reasons.

In every marriage the rules are different as established by the couple, and not every marriage will involve monogamy, not every marriage will involve love. That's all fine. Obviously if your religion states that marriage is this big thing for life with all these rules, then you can go that route, and just as you shouldn't get to force those rules onto the marriages of others, so too should the government not set time limit rules onto a marriage that probably does not need it.

If you want a 2 year renewal in your marriage, make it part of your marriage, make a nice ceremony of it every couple of years to renew your vows or whatever. Forcing everyone to do that is stupid.

[Crystal]

I think it's silly. xD Aside from personally having a high opinion of marriage, setting a date like that is like practically looking forward to it's failure. We don't even do that in most full-time work contracts, and I'd argue that a marriage is something more of a commitment than a job.

The whole point of a marriage is to symbolize a commitment to each other. If you put an expiration date on it, you might as well just sort of live together for a while... with some tax benefits? There's no point in it; and like Komori said, it would be mighty easy to forget to renew. Like "Oh... are we married right now? I forget."

I mean, I get that this is supposed to 'fix' the high divorce numbers, but it's not really going to fix anything. They're still getting divorced. You're just calling it something different.

[Deleted]

I didn't read the whole article 'cause I am on the go.

Entering a marriage is a responsebility, just like any other. Some people aren't ready for it and end up getting divorced. Others fail their responsebility by choosing other priorities, or fail to develop the relationship and also end up in a divorce.

I am very much against this renewal. A lot of laws would need to be changed as well. If an American were to marry an immigrant, their greencard/residence application would get severely tedious due to the timeframe of the marriage.
I am also willing to bet that it wouldn't be free to renew (I base that off of my previous dealings with the US government).

[Stal]

I don't know. I can see the benefit to this. I upgrade my phone to a newer and better model every two years. This sounds like a good deal for marriage, too. *rubs chin*

*severely brick'd* X.o

But seriously, I see the point they're going for here in strictly contractual terms. And some people might actually really like this arrangement. Personally, though, I find it distasteful and against what I see marriage as a symbol of. So I don't really agree with the concept, though I see where it's coming from.

EDIT -- and if you consider it from the contract point of view, it'd make a doozy of an impact on divorce proceedings. If you have automatic out clauses and a defined time period, breaking contract early may result in penalties and/or denials. And having a minimum of two years might force people to work through problems instead of just calling it quits...

[Deleted]

I only wouldn't have a problem with it if people who were serious about lifelong love had the option to not have an expiration date.

[Dju]

Nov 7, 2011 15:59:33 GMT -5 @saeryena said:

I only wouldn't have a problem with it if people who were serious about lifelong love had the option to not have an expiration date.

There is, i think they mention it on the article. There is the "Forever after" option!

[Stal]

Truthfully, the more I think about this, the more I think it's a great idea.

Legal recognition and such is entirely separate from the meaning of marriage. There was a time where marriage was done and had nothing to do with the law or government. I've long wanted to see govt back out of the marriage business. If they could stick to treating it as a contract, with defined terms, clauses, etc, you'd have a lot more to think about than rushing into a commitment that maybe you're not ready for. And the contract should include terms for divorce in it. Divorce proceedings would be easier to get through, less messy, etc... but you may have less divorces to begin with as people either let contracts expire or didn't deal with the hassle involved.

And those (like me) that view marriage as a sacred covenant and vow for life, well, that meaning isn't gone. The only thing different is how the govt views things.