well, take care :) stumbled upon your blog and just subscribed to your RSS feed :) I grew up in Paris from French Mom and American Dad, both of which still live there and I visit yearly. I’ve lived in california for 9 years (since 19).

thanks for your comment, but I have to ask: is your caps lock key stuck?

Hope it all turns out the very best for your family.

This was the article from the Cash part of The Observer.

Good point that Watski, I will have to research that, as being a non-French person I would probably get thoroughly shafted (pardon my French)..

I read in the Observer this weekend about the divorce laws, where some countries break down rights more severely than others. I think I remember France being one of those. So as much as the law isn’t on your side now it equally isn’t on your side if you were to be divorced in France.

Or something like that.

Im guessing divorce is the last thing you’re thinking of though.

We could put a clause in the deeds so that the surviving partner would have the ‘right to buy’ the other’s half of our (hypothetical) flat. Which includes the right to pay 40% tax on the amount (the top rate, for people who are not related to each other).

So you see, French law really puts our back to the wall and leaves no alternative but to marry in order to be provided for.

And I know of (very sad) cases where the children inherited the family home, and kicked out the aged parent and put them in a home so that they could get their hands on the capital. Charming.

* my reasons are too pragmatic and not romantic at all

So if you go down on one knee and produce a ring while saying ‘please marry me because I never want to live without you’, he would say yes then? You could call his bluff on this one…

* they involve scenarios where one of us pops our clogs which he just finds morbid

One of you IS going to pop your clogs. Both of you, in fact; but most likely one of you before the other. He needs to get real on this one. Particularly as, statistically, he’s likely to die first. Losing him would be bad enough; if, when newly bereaved, the two of you were also so financially insecure that you lost your home and your lifestyle as well, you might never get over it. It’s hard for many people to think about the deaths of their loved ones, or the likely effect of their own death on their loved ones, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t care about this once he understood it.

* he has already made the biggest commitment of all by having a child with me

So, and I agree with Cal here, what’s so difficult about making a smaller commitment to secure the future of you and Tadpole if he dies first, and he and Tadpole if you do?

Another option where the finances are concerned is to make legal wills in favour of each other. This is also morbid in Mr Frog’s world view and practical in most people’s. Top Bloke and I have done this and we don’t even have children. Doesn’t solve the name or nationality issues though.

Good luck. Let us know how you get on.