Why should marriage change your legal status, other than as a contract?

Things like tax rate and what an insurance company charges you.


Answers:
I have wondered about this too.

It may have something to do with the history of marriage itsef. Marriage, originally, was a way to insure parentage (along with the premium put on virginity and the 'ownership' of women by men). As such, it was a contract that ensured that a particular woman would only be sexually available to one man, thus ensuring that said woman's children were truly the children of said man. That way, the man knew that it would be *his* children that would inherit his land, not someone else's children. It kept the private property in the family. From there, marriage evolved into an economic and political arrangement, with wealthy nobles marrying off their children in order to: 1) Gain more property and wealth or 2) Make beneficial political allies. Seeing as how marriage does have its roots in economics and politics, it might make sense that certain economic benefits have survived into the present. Such as inheritance laws.

The second reason may have to do with societies wanting to encourage people to marry. There are many problems with your 'traditional' nuclear family (which, if you know your history, is anything but traditional), but when it works, it is generally stable. When two parents take the economic and social burden of raising only their children, it saves the government a lot of time and money. And, two parent households do have a slight advantage, in societies without federally-funded daycares and a lack of quality after school programs, of raising socially well-adjusted children. So said governments will want to make marriage as attractive as possible.