What are the differences between getting married or being a defacto couple in Japan especially when having children? In many countries around the world now it’s almost considered the same. Are there any legal differences?
Sounds like your asking about a common law marriage? I don’t have any personal experience to add, but Googling brought up a bunch of results.
All I know is that my coworker told me if you have children in Japan, their surname will automatically be the mother’s surname, so if you’re not legally married and want the children to have the father’s name, you’ll have to get it changed later after you get the child a passport from the parent’s home country with the desired name.
Japan does not officially recognize it. So for example, if one of the couple is a dependent/low earner, then they cannot be a category 3 insured dependent spouse for social security purposes (meaning they would have to pay their own national pension and national health insurance)
And like wise, the financially supporting person of the couple cannot utilize the dependent spouse deduction/special spouse deduction on their tax return.
Additionally, should one of the couple be foreign then they cannot qualify for the spouse of Japanese national/spouse of PR visa or the dependent visa. there are some paths for legally married (in their home country) same sex couples to get a designated activities visa though, but that’s only due to “humanitarian” purposes due to Japan’s national level human rights violation of not recognizing same sex marriage.
But if a foreigner is in a same sex partnership with a Japanese then you won’t ever qualify for the DA visa.
Some local governments give certain recognitions for same sex couples, but no way near as much as they actually can because local governments do get a certain level of autonomy, especially over the benefits they give (i.e they could give same sex couples some credits in the value of the dependent spouse deduction/special spouse deduction to at least offset their resident tax bill) but they don’t, which opens speculation of…. Why? Which to me suggests that some dinosaur officials within the local government are not actually in agreement with same sex partnership, which can somewhat give the feeling that the local governments “acceptance” of same sex partnership is just for show to give the illusion of how progressive they are compared to other local governments.
Anyway, I digress.. the point is that in Japan it’s better to be married than cohabitating.
If you are defacto couple then you are not considered to be a next-of-kin so for example you are not considered as family when visiting hospital and other times when a next of kin has special privileges compared to strangers.
People often forget that marriage both partners legally become each others closest relatives with respect to the law.
Among other things, the father is not automatically recognized as such and must file to be considered the child’s father. But if the father is a foreigner, that filing requires additional paperwork and papers from the embassy so it becomes a huge hassle. Also based on a friend’s experience (UK citizen and not married to the mother) he could not give his kids his family name even on their UK passport due to not being married.
In Japan getting married is a matter of submitting a paper at city hall, so even for people who don’t want to deal with all the faff of a ceremony, it’s generally strongly recommend as soon as children are involved. (Make sure to file before the birth).
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Sounds like your asking about a common law marriage? I don’t have any personal experience to add, but Googling brought up a bunch of results.
All I know is that my coworker told me if you have children in Japan, their surname will automatically be the mother’s surname, so if you’re not legally married and want the children to have the father’s name, you’ll have to get it changed later after you get the child a passport from the parent’s home country with the desired name.
Japan does not officially recognize it. So for example, if one of the couple is a dependent/low earner, then they cannot be a category 3 insured dependent spouse for social security purposes (meaning they would have to pay their own national pension and national health insurance)
And like wise, the financially supporting person of the couple cannot utilize the dependent spouse deduction/special spouse deduction on their tax return.
Additionally, should one of the couple be foreign then they cannot qualify for the spouse of Japanese national/spouse of PR visa or the dependent visa. there are some paths for legally married (in their home country) same sex couples to get a designated activities visa though, but that’s only due to “humanitarian” purposes due to Japan’s national level human rights violation of not recognizing same sex marriage.
But if a foreigner is in a same sex partnership with a Japanese then you won’t ever qualify for the DA visa.
Some local governments give certain recognitions for same sex couples, but no way near as much as they actually can because local governments do get a certain level of autonomy, especially over the benefits they give (i.e they could give same sex couples some credits in the value of the dependent spouse deduction/special spouse deduction to at least offset their resident tax bill) but they don’t, which opens speculation of…. Why? Which to me suggests that some dinosaur officials within the local government are not actually in agreement with same sex partnership, which can somewhat give the feeling that the local governments “acceptance” of same sex partnership is just for show to give the illusion of how progressive they are compared to other local governments.
Anyway, I digress.. the point is that in Japan it’s better to be married than cohabitating.
If you are defacto couple then you are not considered to be a next-of-kin so for example you are not considered as family when visiting hospital and other times when a next of kin has special privileges compared to strangers.
People often forget that marriage both partners legally become each others closest relatives with respect to the law.
Among other things, the father is not automatically recognized as such and must file to be considered the child’s father. But if the father is a foreigner, that filing requires additional paperwork and papers from the embassy so it becomes a huge hassle. Also based on a friend’s experience (UK citizen and not married to the mother) he could not give his kids his family name even on their UK passport due to not being married.
In Japan getting married is a matter of submitting a paper at city hall, so even for people who don’t want to deal with all the faff of a ceremony, it’s generally strongly recommend as soon as children are involved. (Make sure to file before the birth).