While there are plenty of benefits of being committed to someone you love, seniors also need to think about issues that may come up with new marriages during their golden years. After losing a spouse, marriage going south, or simply having a poor run at the dating scene, many older adults have thrown in the towel when it comes to finding companionship later in life. Despite how great a new love might make them feel, some seniors are nervous about getting back in the dating game – especially if they have grown children. Even with that added hoops jumping, large numbers of seniors prefer living together over getting married.
While an increasing share of all ages are living together, unmarried couples are growing faster in the oldest segments of the population. The US Census Bureau reported a significant increase in the share of 65-year-olds who were not married and those who were not married between 1990 and 1999. According to Pew Research Center, the number of cohabiting adults age 50 or older increased by 75% in the 10 years from 2007 to 2016. The fastest-growing demographic among unmarried couples is older adults (one source said that over the last decade, unmarried partners aged 65 or older increased 70 percent).
The number of adults older than 50 living together outside marriage more than doubled from 2000 to 2010, from 1.2 million to 2.75 million, according to The Journal of Marriage and the Family. Among those age 75 and older who have ever been married, 58% of women and 28% of men experienced a death in the past in a spouses lifetime, making this phase of life especially challenging for older adults.
Add to this finding a number of studies showing deteriorating health that is commonly associated with older adults living alone, and it is easy to understand why people might be willing to tie the knot, even late in life. If you are finding love later in life, it is important to think about all of the financial benefits as well as downsides of the knot. Finding someone to spend the rest of your life with is a major reason why people want to tie the knot … at any age.
Couples who marry in their later years do so solely because of a relationship, because of the love, companionship, and emotional support that it provides. What truly sets these couples apart, whether they are married, living together, or separated, is the emotional fabric of their relationships. Companionship-based love, seemingly based on friendship, seems the key characteristic of older married couples interactions.
Older married couples are likely to experience less conjugal conflict than younger counterparts, though they report erotic bonds as being less central in their lives. Older adults are generally happier and more content in life and their marriages than younger adults. As Teresa Cooney, a social scientist at The University of Colorado at Denver, found when she compared late-life remarriages with early marriages, those older couples were better at solving problems and less likely to fight. Boston University Sociologist Deborah Carr has done preliminary analyses on older couples who have remarried, and says that it is likely that they are more equal economically, more self-sufficient as individuals, and less tied down by gender roles.
Older couples tend to have a lot more experience, know the challenges that health problems can bring, and have an appreciation for patience and compassion. The high cost of healthcare – now estimated at $11,000 per year on average for those age 65 or older – is a reason older couples prefer not to get married. Rather, older couples are fearful that marrying would burden them with higher medical costs, eliminate their retirement benefits, increase their taxes, and destroy their estate plans.
All of the same reasons that younger couples cite for not getting married can also apply to older people – not wanting to relive the experiences of an ugly marriage, for instance, or not wanting the government involved in the relationship – but, for many older people, finances are the biggest apprehension about legally entering into a union.
Preserving Your Benefits
Many older couples choose not to marry because they do not want to lose their spouses Social Security benefits or their ex-spouses retirement, said Lily Vasileff, a certified financial planner and the emeritus chairman of the Divorced Financial Planners Association.
Older people with lower financial security obviously benefit from finding a partner with higher assets. If the other spouse has young children, a couple could cover private schools, uniforms, hobbies, etc. A single person may make $25,000 per year before they are taxed against their Social Security benefits, and a married couple may only make $32,000 combined before taxes are levied.
Couples living in their own homes (and expecting to do so for the rest of their lives) have the least traditional relationships, and the greatest amount of freedom. The most successful couples do not assume that their partner is the same person they were 20 years ago, even though they share a lot of similarities. Senior citizens are not alone in listing the myriad practical reasons to think cohabitation is a better choice for their specific situation. Aging partners typically own homes and have investment portfolios and other assets; they also might have grown children who are unhappy with the living arrangements of their parents.
Numbers of LATs – “long-term committed couples” living separately together – are few, but University of Western Ontario Sociologist Huijing Wu found that about one-third of Wisconsin adults who were not married but living with partners in their fifties were LATs in 2011.
Even if you end up not marrying your partner, being in a long-term relationship together means at least a certain amount of transparency and financial sharing. Even if you do not want to get caught in your partners debt, this is going to continue to be a problem in your lives together. If you have kids and your partner are arguing, recognize you might not be able to walk across that gap without jeopardizing one of the relationships. Life can be overwhelming, so make time for patience with your partner, and always offer help to them if they are struggling.
