Posted by How, the world can change. It can change like that, due to one little word. Married. – “Cabaret”
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution? – Groucho Marx
In the beginning, there was only the Single status. Then Adam and Eve ate of the tree of community property states and began splitting income on their returns and won in Tax Court. Several non-community property states passed community property statutes, but the others lobbied Congress to revise the tables and create the Married Filing Jointly (MFJ) status, widening the brackets and requiring spouses to file together. But if Adam and Eve had roughly equal incomes, they wanted to be treated as single. The Married Filing Separately (MFS) status was created, which treated each spouse as single on the condition that they forfeit many benefits (no child credits or education credits, no social security income threshold, etc.).
All this is fairly (un-)interesting background to one of my pet peeves. As part of my penance for decades of doing corporate taxes, I run a free tax return service for a great organization. About once a fortnight, Eve or Adam will come in and ask to file MFS. The reasons are sometimes just convenience (my spouse is out of town for the next year or so) or monetary (I think I will have a refund but my spouse owes money) or sometimes they haven’t seen the other spouse for years. When I explain that such a return is either out of scope (community property laws in Texas often make them too complex for the average preparer) or, that if we can prepare it, Adam or Eve or both will lose many benefits (“You mean I can’t get that retirement savings credit?”), more often than not the response is “Then I’ll just file as single.”
When I reply that they filled in the intake form as married, often I will get one of two responses: either “We’re just kind of married.” or “We’re only common law married.” As to the first, I cannot even hazard a guess as to what that means. As to the second, I usually tell them that we have a legal term for that in Texas. It’s called “married.”
For a country that prides itself on holding the institution of marriage to be sacred, we play with the term for our convenience more than is decent for my sensibilities. I know that the divorce rate of over 50% of marriages is skewed too high by the repeat offenders, but it’s also understated by the number of marriages that are totally disregarded in this fashion. To say you’re married one minute and not the next cheapens the institution far more than same-sex marriage or divorce.
If you want to marry, Mazel Tov! Be proud. Trust you spouse enough to present a united front to the world, or at least to the tax man. If you can’t do that, you probably should not get married or, if you’ve already crossed that Rubicon: you should get a divorce, not play ducks and drakes.
Death and Taxes 