355 - Singlism and the Truth About Being Single

Challenges

Singles face significant legal and financial challenges due to policies favoring married couples. Jase Lindgren highlights that married individuals can exchange unlimited gifts tax-free, while singles face taxation on gifts over a certain amount 1. Additionally, married men often earn more than their single counterparts, with studies showing a salary increase ranging from 2% to 25% 1. Dedeker Winston shares a personal concern about the lack of benefits for unmarried partners, such as visitation rights and custody issues 2.

You have the option, if you're a married person, you have the option to do what benefits you most. And as a single person, there is no option that benefits you.

--- Jase Lindgren

These disparities extend to adoption difficulties and increased risks of poverty and hunger for singles, especially during crises like the pandemic 1.

   

Solutions

Singles and those in non-traditional relationships are finding creative ways to navigate systems that favor married couples. Dedeker Winston discusses using legal tools like custom wills and forming corporations with friends or partners to gain protections typically reserved for married individuals 3. Jase Lindgren shares an experience where he questioned the flexibility of health insurance benefits to include non-spousal partners, highlighting the slow adaptation of institutions to diverse relationship structures 4.

I'm all about using those tools to your own advantage in order to get the legal protections that I'm. Unfortunately, we're not given quite yet as a right as either single people or people who are not married or not monogamous in some way.

--- Dedeker Winston

These strategies, while not universally accessible, offer a way to "beat the system" and secure rights and benefits for singles and non-traditional relationships 3.