Montana is an interesting state in general when it comes to laws.
It's the only state where an engagement ring is an unconditional gift, for example. Every other state the giver can sue the receiver to recover the ring if the engagement is broken off.
Another example is that Montana is one of a few (the only?) state that doesn't have at-will employment. After a probationary period, if you fire someone it needs to be for cause.
> the giver can sue the receiver to recover the ring if the engagement is broken off.
Which contradicts the whole idea of an engagement ring:
> In the United States, until the Great Depression, a man who broke off a marriage engagement could be sued for breach of promise. Monetary damages included actual expenses incurred in preparing for the wedding, plus damages for emotional distress and loss of other marriage prospects. Damages were greatly increased if the woman had engaged in sexual intercourse with her fiancé.[32] Beginning in 1935, these laws were repealed or limited. However, the social and financial cost of a broken engagement was no less: marriage was the only financially sound option for most women, and if she was no longer a virgin, her prospects for a suitable future marriage were greatly decreased. The diamond engagement ring thus became a source of financial security for the woman.
> The diamond engagement ring thus became a source of financial security for the woman.
Which is ironic, given the
low resale value of diamonds.
> In fact many jewelers won't buy a diamond back unless you've previously purchased that same diamond from them and have the documentation to prove it. Even then they'll typically only do a trade in, whereby you buy another higher priced diamond and trade your old diamond in. [0]
Gold sold in India is almost always 24ct (pure). Gold sold in other countries for jewelry is an alloy (usually 18ct) so that it can stand up better to daily wear. So you're technically not getting as much gold.
So, we are celebrating women as chattel property who need to preserve their virginity to enhance their capacity to marry well. In 2018.
Your comment is making me feel vastly better about never having had an engagement ring, though I got married at age 19 and spent about 2 decades as a homemaker in a 1950s style marriage.
(Edit: I'm a woman, in case that actually needs to be said.)
Perhaps the poster was celebrating women as chattel property. I don't know. I thought it was an interesting fact. It's weird more states haven't determined an engagement ring is simply a gift, and not a sort of (as i learned today from the poster's comment) bizarre form of insurance policy.
It is interesting historical information. Except for the introductory statement "Which contradicts the whole idea of an engagement ring" which essentially asserts an expectation that we should accept this historical practice as the correct basis of laws today.
I'm currently 53. When I was 19 or 20, I had a college classmate in her 70s iirc who talked about legally needing her husband's written permission to even get a job when she was in her twenties. This was the degree to which women were treated as property. So, yes, around 80 years ago, marrying well was just about the only hope of financial solvency a woman had.
I'm a former homemaker. I raised two special needs kids and followed my husband's military career around the world. Between that and a serious medical crisis, I've been really dirt poor for years and spent some years homeless.
So I think quite a lot about the degree to which society and husbands really ought to compensate women more for their labor and personal sacrifices in raising kids and supporting male careers at the expense of their own.
But policies are always two edged swords. Given how incredibly poor I have been, I am incredibly leery of the existence of actual laws still on the books that are rooted in the historical artifact of treating women literally as property of their husbands, even if that law is supposedly in the interest of the woman who is otherwise expected to accept being treated as a man's possession.
I have worked hard to try to find my voice in a world that is often openly hostile towards a former homemaker and her views being treated like a real person. I get crapped on a lot by self-proclaimed feminists who are often childless career women who seem to not actually be happy with their lives and are taking it out on me for various reasons.
The world needs very much to find a way to help people both stay home to care for children when that is the right answer for the family and also help them get a real career afterwards when that time has passed. The law in question is part of the manacles that keep women oppressed and poverty-stricken.
Please note I was careful to not attack the GGP. I just commented that it made me feel better about a detail of my life that I occasionally lament as evidence of a lack of "romance" in my life. I had something better than romance. I had a husband who genuinely cared about my welfare, something that is typically lacking in marriages based on the idea that he basically bought her because he has money, even if it isn't as explicit as such arrangements once commonly were.
The engagement ring laws cited are part of a polite form of selling oneself into slavery. It should be ancient history, but in 49 states, it is still the law.
> So I think quite a lot about the degree to which society and husbands really ought to compensate women more for their labor and personal sacrifices in raising kids and supporting male careers at the expense of their own.
Isn't that the whole idea behind alimony? Assuming the marriage ends prematurely (i.e. not "till death do us part") and speaking of the husband's responsibility in the matter.
As to society's responsibility in this matter, women have 100% the same rights as men in this day and age (well, other than the "right" to be conscripted) so at some point people just need to accept that choices they make in life will have certain drawbacks and/or advantages which may or may not affect their future in positive and/or negative ways. I'm also roughly the same age as you so I know there really weren't "manacles that keep women oppressed and poverty-stricken" in our lifetime and in fact the plight of women has arguably been the best it has ever been in all of human history. I'd even go as far as say it's The Golden Age of Womendom. Though, admittedly, things were a bit different pre-90's with regards to single mothers and, umm, "non-traditional" gender roles, probably more so if you didn't have the "luck" of growing up a major metropolitan area I'd imagine.
Please don't take what I'm saying as a personal attack but merely as an opposing viewpoint because I know these subjects get kind of touchy these days.
The problem is that women still get pregnant, women still lactate and men do not (people looking for BS excuses to attack me can spare me their rant about how that statement makes me transphobic, thanks -- there are far better ways to advocate for trans rights than randomly pissing on people). This is further compounded by a raft load of social norms that I see as ultimately rooted in that fundamental reality.
I'm not interested in fighting with you, but when you outright dismiss my assertion that women remain oppressed, it's really not fertile ground for having a good discussion on the topic. I'm not having a good day to begin with and your comment just reminds me of comments on HN where people try to dismiss the idea that my gender is a serious barrier to financial connections on HN and my rebuttal to that is that I appear to be the only woman to have ever been on the leaderboard and then that gets attacked as irrelevant and it's a really crazy making thing for me.
A lot of men on the leaderboard are quite well heeled. Some of that money clearly comes from their connections here on HN. These conversations make fire coming shooting out my ears and that's not a good place from which to try to engage in civil discourse in accordance with HN guidelines.
> women have 100% the same rights as men in this day and age
No, they don't. For one example, there are several hoops that women have to jump through when getting some medical procedures. Men do not have to jump through those same hoops.
I believe it's strictly in the employee's favor. It comes from a specific law that Montana passed: "Wrongful Discharge from Employment Act"
ADDED: Not sure why I would see that as a problem anyway. If you can't be walked out the door without another dime, why wouldn't you be fine with giving notice in the vast majority of cases?
In the vast majority of cases, it doesn't matter. But I think it's ethically wrong for a company to have this power over an individual. Can't it lead to a situation where, for a few weeks, a person becomes an involuntary worker (i.e. a slave) - unless they negotiate or buy their own release?
I live in Austria, arguably the most backward-looking rich Western country, and my agreement requires me to give a four-week notice. While my employer is such that this will never become an issue, I believe that the "at-will employment" is one of the many manifestations of the "American freedom" that also give the US its competitive edge.
I'd honestly rather run the risk of having to legally work somewhere a few weeks than the company having the power to simply dismiss me without cause. I always hesitated to simply be myself at work for fear of this sort of thing when I lived in the states. I lived in a small-to-medium sized, fairly christian towns. I'm a bisexual athiest that doesn't care what race she dates. And in general, I'm a good employee, especially for the sorts of jobs I had. Once place need actual cause to fire me, I can relax a little.
Having worked at a firm with largely big-C Conservative, Christian, male heads of department and up, I've seen how my more "out-there" co-workers were treated[0]. Folks who were open about their "pagan" religions, or polyamorous ways, or even women of the same social standings who dared have a job, get pregnant and raise children were treated terribly. If it weren't for the fact that good coders and managers are hard to find, I'm sure it would have been even worse, and them having some protection would make resting easier.
Still, that lack of protection meant they could find greener pastures and leave sooner. Personally, I've had a few jobs wherein I was lied to about the position, duties and responsibilities, etc. and after finding out it was a "Take it or leave it" situation, I left.
I really wish we had a bit more leeway in terms of negotiating employment agreements, so folks could find the right balance for them. Sadly, the business world is full of cargo-cult behavior so we get bog standard take it or leave it deals.
[0] - I'm not saying this an indictment of any group, just illustrating the conflict.
See, that last bit - the lying about position, duties, etc - would be harder where I am now. Yes, I do generally have to give notice to leave a place, but everyone also has the right to a contract before they start a job. Minimally, it lists duties, positions, pay rate, and things like that. The notice time is in the contract as well - and the contracts cannot take away rights given by law (so they can't force people into arbitration instead of having a lawsuit, for example).
Granted, at least for your average low-to-mid level worker, you don't have as much negotiating power. Luckily, however, there are legal protections for regular sick time (get the flu, stay home 3 days, and you are safe to do this a few times a year) and parents have more time, since they are responsible for other little humans who get sick. (I don't have children, but fully agree with this). And there is either 4 or 5 week of vacation each year for everyone. These protections make it easier to find something that works with life.
Having a decent notice period favors the employee much more than the employer and most employers offer PYLON (pay in liew of notice) and often half a months notice period will be taken up by annual leave
And as some one living in Austria I thought you would have been acutely aware of the social status symbol of working in a professional role that has a long 3 - 6 month notice period.
Not sure about Austria, but in my home country, Poland, the employee is liable for statutory damages. He will be ordered by the court to pay the employer an amount equal to his gross salary for the notice period [1].
For example, if you earn 10,000 PLN gross (7,000 PLN net) and quit without observing a 3-month notice period, you will have to pay your employer 30,000 PLN, i.e. over four times the monthly net salary.
Of course, if the employer believes they incurred a loss due to the employee leaving without notice, they can sue for additional damages of any amount.
In the UK (as I understand it) you might become liable for the costs of replacing you until the end of your notice period, probably because of "breach of contract". But the business would have to be pretty shitty to do this and probably willing to lose all of that money again in legal fees. Mostly they would probably on refuse to give you a reference.
So many people make this mistake. Instead of splurging on a really big wedding, put the money into something that is actually going to benefit you and your relationship.
I believe the criticism is directed towards the wedding industry that manipulates emotions to make the hard sell. The modern wedding is mostly a consumer product. Like all consumer products, it can certainly be very enjoyable if you like that sort of thing!
I also believe the criticism is directed towards people who concentrate their efforts on the wedding to the detriment of the actual marriage.
Humans, as a group, are not universally rational actors. Such is life, or is that a cliche?
I hope that this being something that engages your hate means that your personal life is otherwise quite good. May it be filled with all of the same and rational behaviours you choose to make.
Most of the time people who spend big on weddings do so because they are socially programmed to do so. They believe/feel that the bigger the wedding, the more legitimate their love for each other is.
Keep in mind that a lot of people can’t realy afford big weddings, but use what little savings they have on them anyway.
Basically, the entire extravagant wedding culture is absolutely irrational and crazy. It just doesn’t seem that way because it has been normalized over decades.
Plus those don't seem to have that much money to spare/waste. They got married early to get the money to spend on the wedding? Have a party someplace that is almost free, cater it yourself.
It helps to acknowledge that big weddings are a marketed product by wedding vendors and adjacent businesses. Just like De Beers popularized diamonds over a similar timeframe, weddings have grown from small family functions 100 years ago to large events (on average), with proportionately increased cost (yes, accounting for inflation).
Rational people recognize that real world humans are not rational and have irrational wishes and needs. If you never fill any of your irrational needs, you will grow resentful, angry, frustrated and jealous of other people happiness. Actually apply to stoics and ascetic too, through their irrational needs are sometimes unusual.
In any case, dream wedding is not necessary something you cant afford. It is something you dream about.
1) Doesn't the US military have chaplains who could
perform marriages? Why don't they?
2) What additional value does a married service member
provide to the taxpayer that is worth an additional
$40/day over what an unmarried service member provides?
1) Yes, but Chaplains are strictly religious, not legal, entities. Further, they are employed by the federal government and would have no ability to marry even if there were some legal status. Marriage is a function of state governments.
2) It's important to keep in mind that military is a case where the free market is generally not at work. Servicemembers take long contracts that they can not negotiate their way out of and surrender all control of most of their lives. In exchange, the military generally takes responsibility for a standard of living on top of their salary. In Spc Lloyd Baker's case, he is probably assigned a barracks at his home base and hence not eligible for a housing allowance. Once he is married, the military recognizes his need to cohabitate with his wife and now pays him a Basic Allowance for Housing. Keep in mind, as a military spouse his wife will be unable to pursue most professional careers due to having to move with her husband at the beck and call of the military.
Right because, frankly, that's the point of marriage, to legally declare "this is a permanent relationship and we are totally serious."
If you don't wanna make the legal commitment to marriage, you don't get benefits of "committed relationship." The military isn't the only governmental or non-governmental organization to treat married partners different from unmarried partners. You'll be shocked to learn that you also can't collect spousal social security if you never married your girlfriend.
The military takes a binary approach to this. You are married, or you are not. If you are married they will do their best to accommodate the spouse (joint assignments, married housing, healthcare, etc). If you are not married, you get none of that.
They highly value commitment. To the nation, to your unit, and to your family.
It is. Unfortunately, I don't think 'people in a casual relationship' are a protected class. It leads to interesting scenarios where service members will specifically marry each other so they can get the housing allowance. The Defense Language Institute (DLI) is called the Desperate Love Institute by service members because of its abnormally high marriage rate. Students at DLI get to move off base and away from the watchful eye of their training instructors if they have a spouse.
Why do we even have chaplains? Does every country have them? People have different religions or many of them no religious views, and there is often tension between these different groups.
The First Amendment. The Free Exercise Clause requires Congress to make religion available to all servicemembers regardless of where they are stationed if one of their denomination is not available. Courts have found that not providing that opportunity for religious guidance would be prohibiting the servicemember's free exercise of religion.
Chaplains typically spend more of their time counseling and mentoring than on religious services.
Did you have to do any paperwork with someone else or at a courthouse? I think you're confusing officiating a marriage ceremony, which chaplains can definitely do, and legally marrying two people, which chaplains can not do.
2) A married service member gets extra housing allowance for dependents. Traditionally this was for a non-working spouse who lives at home and kids. More recently both people could be service members, first with women joining and then with gay marriage, so both service members get increased hosting allowance.
The additional value that the taxpayer receives is that the spouses and kids of service members, who follow then around from duty station to duty station, aren't homeless, so that the service member can concentrate fully on the 16 hour work day for shit pay.
> The additional value that the taxpayer receives is that the spouses and kids of service members, who follow then around from duty station to duty station, aren't homeless, so that the service member can concentrate fully on the 16 hour work day for shit pay.
The servicemember can have the partner and kids either way; what value is the marriage license specifically adding?
Not sure what you're asking; if you're against the idea of government being involved in declaring who is and who isn't married and defining special benefits for married people, then great, me too. Let's abolish marriage and in the cases of government employees either pay them enough to support a family or have a way to declare dependents, married or not.
But we don't live in that world so a marriage license is the way to declare to the government "I have legal dependents now." This is part of the reason why the legality of gay marriage was a big deal.
And regardless of what you call it, it's probably a good idea for the well-being of those in the military to pay for their dependents' housing. As a U.S. taxpayer you're pretty much getting a deal by underpaying those in the military who aren't married. It's not a place to go to get rich.
Retention. A trailing spouse often can’t easily work/find a job at new duty stations every few years, so married service members get paid additional to compensate for that. Being married to a servicemember is extremely tough — without that financial benefit, many married people would leave the service since the base pay is nowhere near enough to support a family not compensate for the difficulty faced by military families. That then creates a problem with retention — it is very expensive to train soldiers and very difficult to gain real world experience — so decreasing retention results in a far higher cost in both real dollars as well as readiness.
We could ask ourselves instead why service members are vastly underpaid. The average salary/benefits for a US soldier works out to about $44,000 per year, exactly the same as a mailman. Yet a mailman works defined hours and, except for the occasional angry dog, doesn’t have a real risk of being severely injured or killed, nor separated from family for months or years at a time. The mailman also doesn’t suddenly get deployed to foreign hellholes for months or years. Yet, we pay the mailman as much as soldiers. When I was a lieutenant, my pay was $36,000 per year — that’s with a college degree and having been an E4 before that. That was officer pay and it is about the same level of pay as an entry level teacher. And we didn’t get summers off. I am not complaining — I knew what I signed up for, but asking questions such as what additional value a married soldier provides is interesting because do we question what extra value pregnant women provide a company? Because paid maternity leave is effectively paying them more money since they are getting paid to not work. Which means they get more compensation per unit worked than a woman who had not become pregnant. Should we question the additional value provided by offering paid maternity leave?
In a more general sense, sometimes the benefits provided to certain sub-populations aren't about any extra value those particular people bring to the job; they're about the extra costs those people have to pay to hold the job. Employers of all kinds want to have a broader labor market, so they pay commuter allowances (so they can hire people living farther away), parental leave (so they can hire and retain parents), and moving costs (so they can hire people who don't originally live in the area).
You should go post this in the thread from the other day where a lot of people thought it was a great idea to discriminate against employees who have children.
The military encourages marriage because it is seen as having a stabilizing influence on young men. The expectation is that, on average, it is correlated with changes in behavior that improve reliability and performance while reducing the prevalence of risky behavior.
2) What additional value does a married service member provide to the taxpayer that is worth an additional $40/day over what an unmarried service member provides?
There are two answers here. The first is that being married means you get housing allowance instead of being expected to live in the barracks. You lose that housing allowance if you get into on base family housing. Either way, the military takes responsibility for making sure you are housed in a way that is not the norm for a civilian job.
The second is that being in the military makes you property of Uncle Sam and the US government has long used this fact to encourage social outcomes it desires. This is part of why the GI Bill provided mortgage assistance and help going to college: Because it is a very effective means to promote home ownership and education which helps stabilize communities, build social capital, reduce crime etc.
It works vastly better at furthering such goals than most of our welfare programs, in part because it is tied to specific outcomes and in part because character and honor are a big part of what you need to develop and prove you have to make it in the military. We do distinguish between "Honorably discharged" and "Dishonorably discharged."
There are a lot of good answers to #2 already, but most talk about abstract benefits and don't directly address the purely fiscal nature of the question. So here you go:
There is no additional $40/day cost to the taxpayer.
For a single servicemember living on base, the taxpayer is paying for their housing (the building may be paid for, but has limited capacity and ongoing repair & maintenance costs), their food, their water, their power, their garbage collection, their cable tv, and on and on. While it would be a pretty dull life, it is possible in some facilities to have all your needs met with essentially $0 living expenses (depending on availability of things like non-coin-op laundry machines).
When a servicemember moves off base, for example to live with their spouse, all those become out of pocket expenses. The housing allowance is simply an offset to what otherwise would be a pretty drastic cut in total compensation.
1) I don't understand the thought process behind this question. Having the title "chaplain" doesn't magically confer teleportation abilities.
2) This is the wrong frame of mind. The answer is zero. There is zero articulable additional benefit for a service member to be married. It is a worthwhile expense anyway.
People do make career choices based on whether they'll be able to have a family and support them. I can't imagine how the military would have the same talent pool to draw from if there weren't measures to make having a family more conceivable.
Afaik, there is some benefit in soldiers being married - soldiers with families suicide less. Apparently, it helps to have something you value at home to keep yourself together in difficult active duty situation.
> 2) This is the wrong frame of mind. The answer is zero.
What? That doesn't make sense. At a glance, otherwise, what's the point of marriage versus civil unions? I'm assuming here, and could be wrong, that there's no legal difference - but people still fight for marriage when they can only have civil unions.
Even if you got rid of all the legal and pay advantages to marriage, people still find it valuable and enriching. It may be an ephemeral benefit, but it's still articulable.
> what's the point of marriage versus civil unions? I'm assuming here, and could be wrong, that there's no legal difference
Yep, there are/where legal distinctions (sort of irrelevant now in the US with federalized same-sex marriage). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_union#United_States . The main problem is that unlike marriages, there is no requirement that states recognize civil unions granted in other states, because:
> The federal government does not recognize these unions.
Not a direct legal distinction, but:
> Civil unions are commonly criticised as being 'separate but equal', critics say they segregate same-sex couples by forcing them to use a separate institution.
2) perhaps someone with some actual experience can shed some more light, but I think it might have to do with potentially losing on base housing accommodations that may not always be provided for married couples?
Yes, the increased pay is accounted for in the extra housing allowance. Those who live on base give up the housing allowance. If there are no accommodations on base you might have to rent in town, or you can choose to do so depending on rank. Typically there are waiting lists for base housing, but that depends on location.
For the same reason maternity leave and other family-oriented benefits are worthwhile in the private sector: organizational performance requires expertise; expertise requires experience be retained in the organization; experience remaining in the organization requires that people not leave when life happens.
The issue isn't that an individual married Marine is worth more than an individual unmarried Marine. The issue is that a Marine Corps where good Marines stay when they start a family is better than a Marine Corps where good Marines leave.
It encourages folks to build families, which generally leads to folks having kids. Societies need workers, and militaries need future boots on the ground.
Summary of some answers, with my thanks to respondents.
1) US states issue & register marriage licenses. Chaplains could
officiate, but would usually expect both parties to be present.
2) Benefits to uniformed services & thus taxpayers:
retention - less turnover & training costs;
increases pool of available talent;
stability, commitment, reliability;
Benefits to service-people with dependent(s) (spouse, and/or children)
paid an allowance (BAH) for off-base housing;
family separation allowance if separated from dependent(s);
health care & benefits for non-service spouse, children;
less likely to be assigned less desirable duties/shifts;
Detriments to married service-people
impacts to non-service spouse's career due to relocations of service spouse;
marriages of convenience to get benefits may have side-effects;
1) If the two were in some sort of physical proximity to each other they would be able to go to City Hall during their lunch break to get married. The physical separation was the issue here.
2) A Servicemember doesn't become more valuable when she picks up playing tennis in her spare time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't spend money building and maintain tennis courts and other recreational facilities for the morale and welfare of servicemembers.
Much more likely to have children, thus creating a generation of workers to pay future obligations of the nation (often incurred from military expenditures).
There won't be a new generation of workers to pay future obligations. Automation means people on average won't generate marginal value in excess of the cost to support them.
That's enlightened thinking beyond most governments on the planet. They'll just happily ignore it because it'll probably happen after they can conveniently retire.
I would have thought more likely to be making progress in additional
training, remaining a stable member of the forces, and climbing the rank ladder,
and less likely to be out getting into trouble of some kind (no, not every unmarried service-person, indeed).
Wouldn't it be more efficient to directly pay people for good behavior?
Or, if climbing the rank ladder is more important, pay low rank people less instead of incentivizing them to give their money to someone else to create pressure to earn promotion.
> What additional value does a married service member provide to the taxpayer that is worth an additional $40/day over what an unmarried service member provides?
They have a cheap caregiver ready for when their leg is amputated.
That's awesome that such a thing is available to members of the military who need it. Seems to me like the sort of thing that could be ripe for abuse, though. I wonder if anyone's ever been married by proxy without their knowledge or consent?
How would a fraudulent proxy marriage be more likely than just making a fraud in-person marriage? Once falsifying paperwork is on the table, the rest is easy.
Yes, I served in the Marines for 4 years and I experienced this firsthand. Unmarried service members often times get the short end of the stick: less pay (if married, you get extra money for housing and food, and separation allowance if you don’t live with your spouse), crappier or more duties (hey! Give the unmarried people stuff to do after normal work, they have no spouse to go home to!), and more. This leads to a whole set of issues: people - especially junior service members - get “contract marriages” where they get married just for the extra benefits money and benefits, which leads to a high divorce rate, and people getting charged under the UCMJ for cheating on their “spouses”. It’s dumb and insane and people should all be paid the same and receive the same benefits
Short form: Basic pay is very low, partially justified by all of the living expenses that the military covers for you (food, housing, health care). If you live off-base, you get an extra pot of money, the "basic allowance for housing", BAH.
If you have dependents then your BAH is higher. I definitely knew of couples that had justice-of-the-peace weddings right after they were engaged, and then had a formal ceremony 6-12 months later.
All of the rate schedules are published online. The married/single difference for an E-5 (mid-level enlisted rank) in New London, CT is only $369.
The big difference is that if you are married, then you are more likely to qualify for off-base housing in the first place.
It's an increase in BAH (basic allowance for housing).
The military is required to house the servicemember and his or her family, the servicemember either lives in government housing or gets an allowance for private housing.
Basically, a married couple/family has a higher housing costs than a single person so the servicemember with a family get extra money to cover those costs.
It's kinda odd though because there's only two "levels" of BAH: "with dependants" and "without dependants." Spouses are always considered dependants. So a family of 10 has the same BAH as a dual income family with no children.
BAH is also a reimbursement for housing expenses, not income, so it's not taxed.
You also get a family separation allowance if you're away from your dependants for more than 30 days. Currently around ~$300 a month.
I've been out for decades, things have probably changed somewhat, but I think this is for a housing allowance and related expenses. I don't know if this is really the reason, but I've been told it's because a married service member is taught to be a more stable service member. Similar to the supposed justification for mortgage deductions, because owners supposedly have stronger ties to the community.
The army wants people that are married, they are more emotionally stable, have stronger connections to their nation and foster what they consider to be important american values.
>A Montana double-proxy marriage is considered legal in all 50 states except Iowa and is recognized by the U.S. military.
What's up with Iowa? Also, what happened to the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution, requiring, among other things, marriages in one state to be recognized by another state.
>To be recognized as legally valid pursuant to Iowa State Law, marriages, which are originated via proxy, must be further perfected; moreover, additional processing is required. Please inform us if you will need your proxy marriage to be recognized under Iowa State Law.
Doesn't Article IV, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution (the "full faith and credit clause") pretty much require Iowa to accept a Montana wedding certificate at face value?
"With the extra money the Army will pay him now that he’s married — an estimated $1,200 to $1,400 a month — the Bakers will be able to afford their dream wedding this fall, he said."
Seems a bit out of step with the current American zeitgeist.
It's the only state where an engagement ring is an unconditional gift, for example. Every other state the giver can sue the receiver to recover the ring if the engagement is broken off.
Another example is that Montana is one of a few (the only?) state that doesn't have at-will employment. After a probationary period, if you fire someone it needs to be for cause.