what would happen if your parents found out tomorrow their marriage is void on a technicality, what would change?

Nothing would change. Like I said in two other comments already, I don't care if the marriage involves the government, it just needs to be a marriage. My parents are married. You cannot conflate a relationship with marriage. They have different meaning status-wise, legally, emotionally. People who are married are committed to working things out on a level that people in a relationship are not. This commitment is necessary to provide a stable home life for raising children.

Do you expect a woman to bear you children without the security of marriage? A child born out of wedlock could ruin her life. It would certainly damage her reputation. And if you were to leave her, she'd be a dreaded single mother. Plus she would have wasted her prime years raising your child.

When a woman says she wants to be married in modern language this translates to men that; your partner wants a nuclear option she can use at any time she desires to take away half your net worth and your family.

No it doesn't. In some cases, for some women, it can mean that. For someone like myself? Marriage means commitment for life, to raise children together, to be a team and do what is best for the both of you. You terpers focus so much on divorce, as if it's a sure thing. I don't EVER want a divorce. I don't want a man's money. I have my own money, I don't need his. This is what I mean when I say TRP is mostly applicable to low class men and women. No UMC-upper class woman is scheming away at planning to divorce rape her hubby. She'll be socially scorned and possibly alienated by people who think divorce is low class (which is NOT an uncommon sentiment).