<prompt> Human: Me and my SO have been together for 8 years and have lived in multiple states. For discussion purposes lets assume we will be together forever and will have kids. We know a few couples who have been together for years and have kids and never get married so the mom can claim the kid and get more back in taxes. We want to make he decision that makessaves us the most amount of money.What are your all thoughts? Interested in opinions, advice, etcetera.Edit: let me put more emphasis on for discussion purposes lets assume we will be together forever. My parents were married for 28 years before getting divorced. Her parents have been happily together for 25 years and are not married. This is not a discussion on the sanctity of marriage, just on the financial effectsbenefits.  <response>: Marriage is generally for worse-case scenarios, not best ones. So if you both live to the ripe old age of 100, with health insurance from your respective jobsretirements, living in countries where you each have independent residency rights, die simultaneously peacefully in your own bed at home, and leave a solid will with named heirsarrange your estates well, its pretty irrelevant.On the other hand, if one of you sickens andor dies before the other, there are certain things that marriage helps with but you can get around with enough legal planning medical decision making, inheritance, etc, and certain things that at least for now there is no substitute for marriage collecting the other ones social security, exemption from inheritance taxes, ability to keep some marital property even while the first one of you is getting medicaid benefits, etc.Some of these contingencies are things you can kind of anticipate and plan for you probably have a sense of whether you are likely or not to want to live abroad, for example and some are nearly impossible your luck with your health and your future jobhealth insurance trajectories. Generally I would say that the downsides of not being married in case of ill fortune outweigh the upsides of not being married in case of good fortune. Even if there are ideological or practical challenges to getting married, you need to know yourself and be honest with yourself about whether you will really take the time, trouble, and expense to keep up with the extra legal and financial work to protect each other without the marriage shortcut. 