Mediate Michigan

Raymond McCauley loves Kristina Hathaway. He just doesn’t want to marry her. For the last six years, the two 40-somethings have been living together in Mountain View, Calif., where they’re raising their three-year-old twins. Why not tie the knot? They’ve been there, and done that, and for reasons emotional – and financial – they don’t want to do it again. “This works for us and we’re happy, so why get married?” says McCauley, a scientist in the biotech industry.

They’re part of a growing minority of Americans who aren’t sure they want to re-board the marriage train – and the recent economy hasn’t exactly encouraged a change of heart. As financial issues take top priority for many Americans, the costs of getting remarried – losing benefits tied to an ex-spouse, for example – have grown to outweigh the emotional rewards. According to the most recent Census Bureau data, a little more than half of divorced men and fewer than half of divorced women are remarried, proportions that have been dropping over the last decade. And last week, the Pew Research Center reported that 78% of divorced and widowed survey respondents said they didn’t want to remarry or weren’t sure they wanted to. Remarriage, it seems, is no longer the brass ring it once was.

via the-case-against-remarriage: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance.