Marriage provides for certain rights and benefits that are not available to couples who are not in a legally recognized relationship (factual relationship). These benefits relate primarily to inheritance rights, health care, social benefits, adoption of a child, tax relief and the right not to testify against the spouse in various proceedings.
Health care
If your spouse is unconscious or incapable of exercising their will over decisions to accept or reject a medical treatment your help will be used to determine their intentions expressed earlier.
The immediate family of the patient, meaning the spouse, parents, children, sisters and brothers, must be informed of the state of health, the provision of health care services and the associated risks.
Inheritance
The surviving spouse succeeds in intestacy:
- with first order successors, equally with the share of a child of the bequeather but not to less than one-quarter of the estate
- with second order successors, that is parents and their descendants, to one-half of the estate
If there are no relatives from the first or second orders, the bequeather’s spouse succeeds to the entire estate.
In addition to their share of the estate, the bequeather’s spouse may request establishment of real right provided for in § 227 of the Law of Property Act on an immovable which was the matrimonial home of the spouses in case the standard of life of the bequeather’s spouse would deteriorate due to succession.
A reciprocal will of spouses is a will made jointly by the spouses in which they reciprocally nominate one another as their successor or make other dispositions of the estate in the event of their death.
If a bequeather has by a will or succession contract disinherited a spouse who are entitled to succeed in intestacy and with respect to whom the bequeather has a maintenance obligation arising from the Family Law Act or a bequeather has reduced spouse’s share of the estate as compared to the share according to intestate succession, the spouse has the right to claim a compulsory portion from the successors.
Adoption
A married couple can adopt a child jointly and thus establish a legally recognized family relationship between them as adoptive parents and an adopted child.
Social benefits
A provider’s non-working widow who is pregnant (from the twelfth week of pregnancy), a parent or guardian of a provider’s child who is not employed and is raising the provider’s child who is under 3 years of age, a retired widow or widower as well as a provider’s widow or widower who has been established to have partial or no work ability has a right to receive survivor’s pension. The same right applies to a person who is a provider’s divorced spouse who attained pensionable age or was established to have partial or no work ability pursuant to the Work Ability Allowance Act before the divorce or within three years after the divorce and whose marriage to the provider had a duration of at least twenty-five years.
If you are organising the funeral of your late spouse you may obtain from your local government a funeral allowance. There are also additional social benefits for persons whose spouse died while in military service.
important Social benefits related to pregnancy and a parent-child relationship are not dependent on the fact of whether you have concluded marriage.
Health insurance
A legally married dependent spouse of the insured person has the right for state health insurance coverage if the person is raising:
- at least one child under 8 years
- a child of 8 years of age until the completion of the 1st grade
- at least three children under 16 years of age
Tax relief
A natural person submits an individual tax return. In case a person's taxable income in 2018 is below 2160 euros, this person's spouse can deduct the person's increased basic exemption if the total taxable income of spouses does not exceed 50 400 euros per calendar year.
Any portion exceeding taxable income or the housing loan interest or training cost limit (if the proprietary relationship between the spouses is jointness of property) or the amount of the basic exemption for children, or any portion thereof, may be transferred to the spouse.
Right not to testify against your spouse
You have the right not to testify against your spouse or a person with whom you are living together in court proceedings.