I mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I'm in Canada. Here's it is an iron clad arrangement. Our lawyer drew up our wills accordingly, our accountant handles our taxes accordingly. No benefit here.

If we split up we would have to go through the same process for custody and asset disposal & disbursements. It's a legally binding thing here.

The three of us walking around as a happy family is a public statement of commitment, no? When we were at Walking with Dinosaurs yesterday morning, no one questioned any papers or marital status. In fact there were thousands of people there, certainly a more truly public statement than hand-picked relatives & friends who feel compelled to show up for a plate of free food and booze.

It would cost time and money for something none of us care about. We'd rather spend our money on winter family holidays or finish off the new kitchen or new pool deck or just put extra into our daughter's education fund (which is appreciable already).

Not arguing, just pointing out that people have different priorities.

So what you're saying is that everyone considers you married already, so effectively you are.

In essence, yes. The key is that the government recognizes it for taxation and other family matters. In our province here in .CA in 2014 marriage would be an expense with no payoff. We'd be better off blowing that money on lottery tickets.

Perhaps in your jurisdiction, not ours. We asked about it ages ago when we were dealing with our lawyer for our wills and our accountant for our income taxes.

Forgot to include this link: Common Law marriage in Canada

We're in Canada and considered common-law: there are no extra legal protections the paper offers. When we were drawing up our wills, our lawyer said as much. Our life insurance has each other as the beneficiary, our wills are the same. If we ever split up, it's off to the lawyers to divide up assets and work on custody.

When we file our yearly taxes we check off the relevant box for 'marital status' (or whatever it asks) for common-law partnerships and do income splitting to minimize the tax hit. Our accountant said there was no difference in having the paper or not for us. My lady is a professional and known as her own name. So. if we ever did get hitched, she would keep her name. No hyphenating, etc. Fine by me.

So what are the benefits? Neither of us see any.

Tricky. It might be that right now, you both behave in a way so that the other person would marry you if you insisted on it. But after getting married, you might both stop behaving that way and then things go downhill.

We are not acting in a 'sales mode' after 10+ years, we clicked early on and are ourselves: no lies, no masks, no illusions.

Reading TFA was interesting as, according to that data, we are perfectly set other than the marriage question. We're both atheist, so for the religious question it doesn't apply though I guess saying "The three of us regularly go to the museum, watch sciency shows, etc." would count as attending a church. ;)

My lady and I have been together over ten years, we have an eight year old daughter and are completely happy.
I wonder how the "Couples who dated 3 years or more are 39% less likely to get divorced" extends to us if we ever got married (not that we've ever thought about it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.)

"and preferred working with them to men. (I'm a man^H^H^H^H^H an Uruk-hai BTW.)" FTFY ;)

"Are you looking at saggy tribal titties again, Anon?"
"No, mommy, I'm looking at -flip flip flip- the Aral Sea."

Thank you for your comment. You are spot on.

One can simultaneously *believe* that X does not exist while also admitting that they lack *knowledge* as to whether or not X actually exists. I do not believe that invisible pink unicorns exist, yet I will admit that I cannot prove it one way or the other. I am both an atheist and an agnostic with respect to invisible pink unicorns.

That is probably true, though I have to wonder why either a 4-way stop or roundabout would be needed at such an intersection---put a stop sign on the low-traffic street and don't stop the high-traffic street, or put a signal there and only stop the high-traffic street when there are cars waiting to cross. I get the impression that the major goal of those small roundabouts is traffic calming---traffic is forced to slow down for the roundabout, but not forced to stop. Of course, I am not a traffic engineer and am largely talking out of my ass, so I will readily concede that I am likely wrong. ;)

I don't think "Windows Phone 8.1" and "Windows 8.1" are really the same though? If they truly released the full OS on a phone it would be fantastic, but in my old experience from the Windows CE days, you get a watered down version of an OS which does not truly compare. So it feels misleading that they call it the same. Now I could be wrong and maybe they've managed to bring some compatibility, which would definitely be interesting.