Aside from being a declaration of love, marriage also brings a variety of financial benefits…
Marriage Allowance
With Marriage Allowance, you can transfer up to £1,260 of your personal allowance to your spouse or civil partner.
To benefit from Marriage Allowance, one person must be paying the basic rate of tax (applied to earnings between £12,571 and £50,270) and the other must not be paying income tax (as they earn below £12,570).
The lower earner can share part of their personal allowance with the higher earner to reduce their spouse or civil partner’s tax burden. Marriage Allowance can reduce the higher earner’s tax by £436 to £1,127 a year for the 2025/26 tax year.
You can use HMRC’s free online service to see whether you could reduce your annual tax bill from Marriage Allowance, and if so, by how much.
Inheritance Tax
When you die, any assets left to your spouse are automatically exempt from inheritance tax (IHT).
You can also pass on your unused IHT allowance to your spouse. There is no IHT due on the first £325,000 you leave when you die, and you usually get another £175,000 allowance on top of that if you are passing on your main residence to your direct descendants. So, if you pass on less than this when you die, and so haven’t used up these allowances, these will then pass on to your spouse. Therefore, if your spouse then passes away, they will get both their own IHT allowance as well as any of your unused IHT allowance. You can find out more about this on the government website.
Savings and Investments
Married couples are able to move their savings and investments between them freely to minimise tax payments of IHT and capital gains tax (CGT).
Example 1 – Partner 1 is a higher-rate tax payer and has savings that generates interest exceeding their personal savings allowance. Partner 2 does not have enough income to be liable for tax, and still has some of their personal allowance left. Partner 1 can therefore transfer some of their savings to partner 2, taking advantage of their tax-free annual allowance.
Example 2 – Partner 1 wishes to sell an asset which will bring profits over £3,000, meaning CGT will be due. However, partner 1 decides to transfer some of the asset to partner 2 first before selling, using up both their allowances, meaning they have either managed to avoid paying CGT entirely, or reduced the amount of CGT they had to pay
State Pension
You may be able to get up to £105.70 a week if you are married or in a civil partnership and are not getting the basic state pension, or are not getting the full amount of £105.70 a week. You may be able to get this increase if you reached the state pension age before 6th April 2016 and your spouse reached state pension age before this date too, and they qualify for state pension. Alternatively, you may be able to get this increase if your spouse reached state pension age after 6th April 2016 but they have one or more qualifying years of national insurance contributions from before this date.
If you reached the state pension age before 6th April 2016, you might be able to inherit some of your spouse’s state pension when they die, by using their qualifying years if you don’t already get the full amount.
You can find out more about how marriage may affect your state pension here.
Inherit ISA Allowance
If your spouse or civil partner dies, you can inherit their ISA allowance, which essentially means you can contribute an extra tax-free amount into your own ISA.
This allows you to contribute your normal ISA allowance as well as the value of your partner’s ISA at the time they passed away. You have three years from the day they died to use this tax-free allowance.
Protection
Marriage tends to provide more legal protections than you would have if just cohabiting. For example, married couples will automatically inherit from one another if one of them dies without a will.
Additionally, marriage can grant you the right to spousal maintenance or financial support in the event of divorce, whereas cohabiting couples who separate don’t have this legal entitlement to financial support.
Many workplace pensions also offer spousal benefits, meaning if your spouse dies, you may receive a portion of their pension, whereas unmarried partners tend to have to be specifically named as a beneficiary in a pension policy to receive benefits.