Regardless of your faith in marriage, which is widely considered as a social institution, you have no way but to accept that it confers multiple rights, benefits and protection across the practical and legal spectrums. Not all of these are same across the states but the list usually includes the followings:
Government Benefits
- Receiving Social Security, Disability Benefits and Medicare for spouses
- Receiving Military and Veterans’ Benefits for spouses, including those supporting medical care, education and special loans
- Receiving Public Assistance Benefits
Tax Benefits
● Joint income tax returns filing with the State Taxing Authorities and IRS
● Under Federal Tax Laws, it is allowed to form “Family Partnership” in order to share the business income with family members.
Estate Planning Benefits
● Inheritance of your spouse’s estate (either in totality or a part of it)
● Forming life estate trusts not limited to married couples, including QDOT Trusts, QTIP Trusts and Marital Deduction Trusts
● Obtaining an exemption from gift taxes and estate taxes for all properties you gift or leave to your husband or wife.
● Becoming a priority if your husband or wife needs someone to decide on healthcare or financial aspects on his or her behalf
Employment Benefits
- Receiving insurance benefits via a spouse’s employer
- Taking family leave to take care of husband or wife when he or she is sick
- Taking bereavement leave if the spouse or any of his or her close relatives passes away
- Getting wages, retirement plan benefits and workers’ compensation benefits for a deceased spouse
Medical Benefits
- Visiting a hospital intensive care unit or other areas of a medical facility during the visiting hours to see the spouse who is receiving treatment and care
- Making plans for medical treatment if the spouse becomes disabled and cannot express his or her wishes to undergo treatment
Housing Benefits
- Filing for joint adoption or stepparent
- Applying for joint care rights for adopted child
- Obtaining a share of marital property after a divorce
- Obtaining child or spousal support, child custody and visitation after a divorce
Consumer Benefits
- Getting family rates for homeowners’ health, car and other kinds of insurances
- Getting tuition permission for using school facilities
- Getting tuition discounts
- Different types of consumer incentives and discounts are reserved only for the married couples
Death Benefits
- Consenting to post-death procedures and post mortems
- Deciding on burial and other last rites
Other Legal Benefits and Protection
- Suing a third party for unnatural death of your spouse and loss of intimacy (loss of consortium)
- Suing a third party for his or her offensive behaviors that might trouble your married life, such as criminal conversation or alienation of attention, affection and admiration
- Claiming the privilege for marital communication, which implies a court enjoys no right to force you to reveal what, considered as confidential communications, transpired between you and your spouse when you got married
- Receiving immigration and residency benefits if your spouse is not a citizen of the host country
- Obtaining crime victims’ recovery benefits if your spouse has been a victim to crime
- Getting visiting rights in prisons and other places where only immediate family is allowed to enter
Talk to your Galveston Lawyer to know the extent of legal and practical benefits that you will enjoy under the pertinent laws of the state where you live.
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