Why even bother marrying your girlfriend, seriously!

[medoraman]

How about for when you have children? Am I the only one who has a Thai fiance who wishes to have kids? I would not dream of not being married to the mother of my children.

 

My fiance has a 10 year visa to the US, and she wants to just live together. I told her about all of the reasons; health insurance, family respect, (both sides), etc etc., but deep down want to make sure we are married before she ever gets pregnant. Kids at a pretty young age can do the math, and you don't want to have to explain that to them if you are trying to teach them moral values.

[cavanami]

If you want to live in the USA then just a 10 year visa will not keep your lady with you all the time. She most likely will get 3 months and maye another 3 months extension and then she will have to leave the USA for a while.

 

If you both want to live, mostly full time, in the USA then she will need a "green card" which means that you will have to be married, as a single lady getting a green card is not easy to do these days.

[unit731]

Marriage is a personal union of individuals. This union may also be called matrimony, while the ceremony that marks its beginning is usually called a wedding and the married status created is sometimes called wedlock.

 

Marriage is an institution in which interpersonal relationships (usually intimate and sexual) are acknowledged by the state or by religious authority. It is often viewed as a contract. Civil marriage is the legal concept of marriage as a governmental institution, in accordance with marriage laws of the jurisdiction. If recognized by the state, by the religion(s) to which the parties belong or by society in general, the act of marriage changes the personal and social status of the individuals who enter into it.

 

People marry for many reasons, but usually one or more of the following: legal, social, and economic stability; the formation of a family unit; procreation and the education and nurturing of children; legitimizing sexual relations; public declaration of love; or to obtain citizenship.[1][2]

 

Marriage may take many forms: for example, a union between one man and one woman as husband and wife is a monogamous heterosexual marriage; polygamy â?? in which a person takes more than one spouse â?? is common in many societies;[3]. Recently, some jurisdictions [4] and denominations have begun to recognize same-sex marriage, uniting people of the same sex.

 

A marriage is often formalized during a marriage ceremony,[5] which may be performed either by a religious officiant, by a secular State authorised officiator, or (in weddings that have no church or state affiliation) by a trusted friend of the wedding participants. The act of marriage usually creates normative or legal obligations between the individuals involved and, in many societies, their extended families.

 

Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that "Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses." The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam gives men and women the "right to marriage" regardless of their race, colour or nationality, but not religion.

 

The selection of a marriage partner may involve either the couple going through a selection process of courtship or the marriage may be arranged by the couples' parents or an outside party.

 

Typically an arranged marriage will be finalized only with the approval of the couple[citation needed], though parents sometimes enforce arranged marriages on their children because of cultural tradition or for some other special reason (e.g., dowry).[citation needed] Sometimes a person seeking marriage is comfortable with having his or her marriage arranged and, even disregarding parental preference, would freely choose an arranged marriage.[citation needed] Forced marriage is common in only a few communities and often attracts harsh criticism even from people who are generally in favor of arranged marriage.[citation needed]

 

A pragmatic (or 'arranged') marriage is made easier by formal procedures of family or group politics. A responsible authority sets up or encourages the marriage; they may, indeed, engage a professional matchmaker to find a suitable spouse for an unmarried person. The authority figure could be parents, family, a religious official, or a group consensus.

 

In some cases, the authority figure may choose a match for purposes other than marital harmony. Some of the most popular uses of arranged marriage are for dowry or immigration.

 

Arranged marriages are still common in some countries, such as India, but are now rare in Western countries.[citation needed] In rural Indian villages, child marriage is also practiced, with parents at times arranging the wedding, sometimes even before the child is born. This practice is now illegal under the Child Marriage Restraint Act. In urban India, people use thriving institutions known as Marriage Bureaus or Matrimonials Sites, where potential partners register.[citation needed]

 

 

A marriage is usually formalised at a wedding or marriage ceremony.[6] The ceremony may be officiated either by a religious official, by a government official or by a state approved celebrant. In many European and some Latin American countries, a religious ceremony must be held separately from the civil ceremony. Some countries â?? such as Belgium, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Turkey[7] â?? require that a civil ceremony take place before any religious one. In some countries â?? notably the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Norway and Spain â?? both ceremonies can be held together; the officiant at the religious and civil ceremony also serving as agent of the state to perform the civil ceremony. To avoid any implication that the state is "recognizing" a religious marriage (which is prohibited in some countries) â?? the "civil" ceremony is said to be taking place at the same time as the religious ceremony. Often this involves simply signing a register during the religious ceremony. If the civil element of the religious ceremony is omitted, the marriage is not recognised by government under the law.

 

While some countries, such as Australia, permit marriages to be held in private and at any location, others, including England and Wales, require that the civil ceremony be conducted in a place open to the public and specially sanctioned by law. In England, the place of marriage need no longer be a church or registry office, but could also be a hotel, historic building or other venue that has obtained the necessary licence. An exception can be made in the case of marriage by special emergency license, which is normally granted only when one of the parties is terminally ill. Rules about where and when persons can marry vary from place to place. Some regulations require that one of the parties reside in the locality of the registry office.

 

Despite a marriage ceremony being conducted by a religious or civil official, most religious traditions maintain that the marriage itself is the act of the individuals themselves, either as a form of contract or as an exchange of vows, with the guests acting as witnesses.[citation needed]

 

Within the parameters set by the law of the jurisdiction in which a marriage or wedding takes place, each religious authority has rules for the manner in which weddings are to be conducted by their officials and members

 

No specific civil ceremony was required for the creation of a marriage among the Greeks and Romans; only mutual agreement and the fact that the couple must regard each other as husband and wife accordingly.[citation needed] In Ancient Greece, men usually married when they were in their 30s.[citation needed] They expected their wives to be in their early teens.[citation needed] This age-structured relationship was also prevalent in same-sex relationships among the Ancient Greeks.[citation needed] Married Greek women had few rights in ancient Greek society and were expected to take care of the house and children.[citation needed] There was not as much emphasis on age disparity among the Romans in marriage.[citation needed] The husband was often older than the bride; he might be only two years older but sometimes could be as much as three times her age.[citation needed] Unlike Greek brides, Roman brides had many more rights, especially during the Roman Empire.[citation needed] There were two types of marriages in Roman society. The traditional form was called conventio in manum. In this type of marriage, a woman lost her family rights of inheritance of her old family and gained them with her new one. She now was subject to the authority of her husband.[citation needed]

 

Alternatively there was the free marriage known as sine manu. In this arrangement, the wife remained a member of her original family; she stayed under the authority of her father, kept her family rights of inheritance with her old family and didn't gain any with the new family. This marriage could simply be annulled by the separation of the couple.[citation needed]

 

The first recorded use of the word "marriage" for the union of same-sex couples also occurs during the Roman Empire. A number of marriages are recorded to have taken place during this period.[9] In the year 342, the Christian emperors Constantius and Constans declared that same-sex marriage to be illegal.[10] In the year 390, the Christian emperors Valentinian II, Theodoisus and Arcadius declared homosexual sex to be illegal and those who were guilty of it were condemned to be burned alive in front of the public. [11]

 

From the early Christian era, marriage was thought of as primarily a private matter, with no religious or other ceremony being required.[citation needed] Prior to 1545, Christian marriages in Europe were by mutual consent, declaration of intention to marry and upon the subsequent physical union of the parties.[citation needed] The couple would promise verbally to each other that they would be married to each other; the presence of a priest or witnesses was not required. This promise was known as the "verbum." If made in the present tense (e.g., "I marry you"), it was unquestionably binding; if made in the future tense ("I will marry you"), it would constitute a betrothal. But if the couple proceeded to have sexual relations, the union was a marriage.[citation needed] One of the functions of churches from the Middle Ages was to register marriages, which was not obligatory. There was no state involvement in marriage and personal status, with these issues being adjudicated in ecclesiastical courts.

 

In the 1200s in England it was unlawful for a woman younger than 24 years to marry, but this changed, beginning in the 1500s, to 20 years of age.[12] With the average age of marriage in the late thirteenth into the fifteenth century being around 25 years of age.[13]

 

It was only after the Council of Trent in 1545, as part of the Counter-Reformation, that a Roman Catholic marriage would be recognized only if the marriage ceremony was officiated by a priest with two witnesses. The Council also authorized a Catechism, issued in 1566, which defined marriage as, "The conjugal union of man and woman, contracted between two qualified persons, which obliges them to live together throughout life."[14]

 

This change did not extend to the regions affected by the Protestant Reformation[15], where marriage by consent continued to be the norm. As part of the Reformation, the role of recording marriages and setting the rules for marriage passed to the state; by the 1600s many of the Protestant European countries had a state involvement in marriage.

 

In the United Kingdom, the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act 1907 was a statute passed by Parliament that removed the prohibition forbidding a man to marry the sister of his deceased wife.

 

 

In the early modern period, John Calvin and his Protestant colleagues reformulated Christian marriage by enacting the Marriage Ordinance of Geneva, which imposed "The dual requirements of state registration and church consecration to constitute marriage"[16] for recognition. That was the first state involvement in marriage.[citation needed]

 

In England and Wales, Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act 1753 required a formal ceremony of marriage, thereby curtailing the practice of Fleet Marriage.[17] These were clandestine or irregular marriages performed at Fleet Prison, and at hundreds of other places. From the 1690s until the Marriage Act of 1753 as many as 300,000 clandestine marriages were performed at Fleet Prison alone.[18] The Act required a marriage ceremony to be officiated by an Anglican priest in the Anglican Church with two witnesses and registration. The Act did not apply to Jewish marriages or those of Quakers, whose marriages continued to be governed by their own customs.

 

In England and Wales, since 1837, civil marriages have been recognised as a legal alternative to church marriages under the Marriage Act 1836. In Germany, civil marriages were recognised in 1875. This law permitted a declaration of the marriage before an official clerk of the civil administration, when both spouses affirm their will to marry, to constitute a legally recognised valid and effective marriage, and allowed an optional private clerical marriage ceremony.

 

In many jurisdictions, a civil marriage may take place as part of the religious marriage ceremony, although they are theoretically distinct. In most American states, a wedding may be officiated by a priest, minister, rabbi or other religious authority, and in such a case the religious authority also acts as an agent of the state. In some countries, such as France, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Argentina, Japan and Russia, it is necessary to be married by government authority separately from (usually before) any religious ceremony, with the state ceremony being the legally binding one. Some jurisdictions allow civil marriages in circumstances which are notably not allowed by particular religions, such as same-sex marriages or civil unions.

 

Marriage relationships may also be created by the operation of the law alone, as in common-law marriage, sometimes called "marriage by habit and repute." This is a judicial recognition that two people who have been living as domestic partners are subject to the rights and obligations of a legal marriage, even without formally marrying. However, in the UK at least, common-law marriage has been abolished and there are no rights available unless a couple marries or enters into a civil partnership.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage

[TroyinEwa/Perv]

[cavanami]

Hmmmm, long copy and paste...I will give it a read the next time I have to take a dump for 2 ~ 3 hours...

[unit731]

 

 

You can't handle the truth !

 

[unit731]

[TroyinEwa/Perv]

You're right.........2 marriages is enough. No more for me.

[Torneyboy]

Three strikes and you are out ....

 

On #3 and loving it ...

[devils reject]

Hmmmm, long copy and paste...I will give it a read the next time I have to take a dump for 2 ~ 3 hours...

 

 

You take your laptop to the toilet?

 

 

Or do you crap in your office/living room?