It’s not often that marriage makes me feel smug. Certainly not when my husband leaves his dirty socks in the living room — and we definitely don’t agree on what constitutes “tidy”.
However, there are many ways in which we sail the waters of marriage harmoniously. Rarely do we argue about money — after all, finance is my bread and butter, so it makes sense for him to leave those decisions to me.
That doesn’t mean I’m always on the ball — as the old adage says, the cobbler’s kids have no shoes — but after reading Rachel Reeves’s plans to bring pensions into the inheritance tax net in 2027, I am feeling smugly confident that my decision to tie the knot a second time was the right choice.
It turned out that the man I thought was my husband for 14 years was, in fact, my boyfriend. Our lovely Spanish wedding all those years ago was legally … well, nothing. We failed to register it within the local 14-day deadline, which was news to us since the priest didn’t speak any English and our Spanish didn’t extend beyond “Dos cervezas, por favor”.
The wedding had served its purpose in appeasing my Catholic parents and life carried on as normal for us, building our lives together with the kids. That was until a solicitor pointed out that if either of us died, the survivor would be walloped with a massive inheritance tax bill. This would start at £150,000 on the house alone, possibly forcing a sale.
