Kids Before Marriage - Legal Issues?

[AnglophileAsh]

I hope this will be acceptable to put under WTT - if it should be moved to a different forum, please advise And I know that any advice here is not meant to be taken as proper legal advice, I'd just like to know if anyone else has come across this type of issue in their early stages of starting a family. It's a little long, but I wanted to provide the backstory of why I'm asking - bear with me!

My OH and I got engaged last fall, at the same time we started talking about WTT - and actually, for a brief week, actually did start TTC but then decided to get other stuff in order first, like buying a bigger house. We definitely plan to get married in the near future, but we have some specific ideas about what we want, such as a summertime wedding, which we didn't plan on having in 2015 as we've spent the first half of the year working on the new house... so that's next year at the earliest. But we do know that we do NOT want to wait much longer before TTC as we are both in our early-ish 30's and would like to be done having kids by the time we are 40 or so, if at all possible. Which puts us at WTT August-ish of this year and getting married in 2016 or later (likely later if we have a newborn next summer).

One of our baby-prep things was meeting with a financial adviser to look at our current incomes and see what needed to be done before maternity leave and planning for baby costs. The adviser mentioned that if we were not going to be married we should seriously consider getting lots of legal things set up in advance, such a life insurance and wills (no problem there), but also medical directives and power of attorney and other legal documents in the event that something happens to one of us. His concern was that if something happened we would not have the legal protections afforded by marriage.

And, it's a little more complicated as my fiance is a British citizen (he has a greencard and is totally legit here in the US), but it could be an issue the adviser thinks. If something happened to me, for example, it sounds like my parents would the right to take the baby away from the father (I seriously DO NOT believe my parents would be so uncompassionate, but the point is that the law would see it that way). We don't have the money yet for a wedding, but it looks like it would be several hundred dollars for all of this legal stuff. We've discussed having a small civil ceremony now (even eloping secretly), but I really want my wedding to be the event I've been dreaming of for years and don't want to sell that dream short just because my baby-dream is more immediate.

What I'm asking is, if anyone would be able to share their experiences or concerns with having a baby prior to getting married. I know it is done all the time, but my immediate circle of friends are all married so none of them have any advice or experience. Are we overly concerned and overthinking this whole thing? Or is it worth spending so much money to have that protection in the interim before marriage legally binds us as well as the baby?

My fiance wonders if perhaps we should postpone even further WTT if this is going to be an issue, but I know he wants kiddos nearly as much as I do, so I'm trying to figure out how much to stress out about this, in addition to everything else, ha!

 

[KalonKiki]

As someone who has had a baby while engaged, I would honestly recommend getting married first but it's all up to you in the end. My toddler will be 2 in September and we are just now getting married in about a week. I feel like we've already been married the last 2 years and it's more frustrating than I thought it would be to not be married to the father of my child. To be clear we did not TTC when we got pregnant with DS, he was a "wonderful whoops" that was the result of a one time oopsie with our protection method. We had to postpone our wedding from the original date (I was not going to walk down the aisle at 9 months pregnant and I'd already put down the deposit on my dress that I couldn't get back). Planning for the wedding has also been difficult with a super active toddler.

There is no rule that says that you can't have a civil ceremony or elope and then have a big wedding later. If your financial adviser thinks it will be that big of an issue with your fiance being British then that may be your best bet. Honestly I think big weddings are overrated anyway, after all of the hassle of dealing with one I would have rather eloped. I feel like I can't enjoy my big day because it's been so stressful. We also can't take a big honeymoon because we have a little one, and I would have rather had a big honeymoon than a big wedding.

Like I said, it's all up to you, I just wanted to share my experience in the hopes that it will help you make a decision that will make you happy and that you won't regret later. I don't regret having my son one bit, I just regret not being married to his father first (which is why I definitely wanted to be married before trying for baby #2). I do not recommend a big wedding with a baby though, if you do decide to have a big wedding after having a baby wait until after your child is at least a year old to do it. I'm glad we didn't get married last year while DS was still so little, it would have been even more of a nightmare than it already is.

Best of luck to you in whatever order you decide to do things.

 

[staralfur]

My DH and I weren't married until my LO was 1.5 and I can honestly say it made no difference to us whatsoever.

I'm not really sure about all the legal stuff, my LO was an oops so it's not something we looked into before having her.

I think that the chances of you dying between the time your baby is born and the time you get married is pretty rare assuming that you're healthy, and then the chances of your parents taking your baby away from your fiancé if that did happen sound even more rare... so that personally wouldn't be a deterrent for me. I'm more of a fly by the seat of my pants kind of girl though and understand that some people prefer to be more prepared than I!

 

[krissie328]

Hmm, I do wonder if maybe you should do a small wedding this summer before ttc and then having your larger wedding/reception next summer. That almost seems to be the best solution.

 

[AnglophileAsh]

Thanks for the input, ladies

We're not planning a huge wedding - probably about 60-70 people (to me that's not very big, haha), and it would be a somewhat casual-yet-elegant affair, and I'd kind of love to have our child(ren) part of the ceremony. I think it's just that I'd want to have the wedding be its own special day of celebration, and not just have a small one this summer that we couldn't do justice to - like we'd be doing it only because it's part of having a baby. Part of it is, too, that we'd want to have his family be part of it from the UK, and there's no way they'd be able to make it over this year (he was married once before, and he always regretted that his family wasn't part of it). So I think, wedding will almost certainly wait. If my uterus has to wait any longer, it might jump out and impregnate itself!

It feels a little paranoid to be thinking of such things, and we wouldn't have if our financial adviser hadn't spent like 20 minutes putting the fear of god into us. Now that he has, though, it's made us seriously wonder. It doesn't sound like that's a common thing for people to do, though.

 

[xstitcher87]

Could you get legal protection in place for your fiance and children in your will though? Sounds like it might be worth seeking legal advice from a solicitor that specialises in either family law or immigration law. It may be something as simple as writing a will that gives custody to their father in the event of your death (for example).

Wishing you good luck! Hope you can get it all worked out! I totally understand about your uterus jumping out and impregnating itself! Sometimes I feel like mine has a mind of its own, lol. I only need to get mine to wait 6 more months...and that is proving difficult enough!

 

[kksy9b]

Honestly, it all sounds a bit suspicious from what the advisor was saying. In terms of power of attorney for legal and medical directives- yes, if you are noy married and something happened to YOU, then it would revert to the next of kin- in this case your parents. Setting up a living revocable trust will allow your to name who you want making these decisions. I Dont think you can set uo a joint trust until you are married (and no clue with him being British). But I would strongly encourage you, and everyone for that matter, to get a trust set up.

As far as your parents being able to take a baby....as long as his name is on the birth certificate, he has full parental rights, regardless of citizenship. Custody would pass to him before anyone else. And if he has an american citizen for a child (I'm mobile and can't see your location- assuming you're in the states with how you write) then I'm pretty sure he will have a right to stay here until they are 18. Your parents may fight him for custody bit would have to prove abuse or neglect on his Parr to get anywhere. That's the part that sounds to me like the guy is just trying to scare you (and maybe try to sell you something later on?)

If you are concerned, I would highly recommend sitting down with an actual lawyer to discuss. Best of luck

 

[Pearls18]

In the UK marriage does have certain benefits but the birth certificate would trump any kind of relationship status I think in terms of custody, although I did choose to re-register my eldest with my marital status once we were married because I heard that he could be less entitled to inheritance to our "legitimate" children, although a will would trump that (yet to do the will....).

But in terms of life insurance I have DH as the nominated beneficiary and for my pension pay out and vice versa which we could have done unmarried, we really need to do a will to decide custody if we both were to go but I'm sure birth certificate covers custody of the live parent if the other was to die.

But yeah I would get an opinion from a lawyer if you're concerned.

 

[AnglophileAsh]

Just for an update to anyone who finds themselves asking similar questions - I went to a seminar this weekend on estate planning, and asked about my situation. Some very helpful information, like some of the documents we need were available online (at least in Washington state), and our wills, which we would need to do up anyway since we have assets, can be written to say "in the event of marriage/children, all here applies" so we wouldn't need to do anything extra to protect our future. I feel much better with this information, and have some resources available if there's any future questions that crop up for us.