What Will Happen To One's Good Credit Score If One Gets Married To Someone With Bad Credit?
If you have a good credit score and get married to someone who has bad credit, in principle your credit score won’t be affected. You and your spouse will continue to have separate credit scores and credit reports, and any bad credit that he or she has in his/her name will neither reflect on your credit report nor affect your credit score.
If after getting married you apply for joint credit accounts such as a credit card, the history of that account will appear on both your credit reports, even if only one of you uses the credit card. Any late or delinquent payment on that joint credit account will affect your credit score negatively. If your spouse uses the card and becomes delinquent on payments, the creditor may run after you for payment as well because your name appears on that credit card.
Now if you and your spouse were to apply jointly for a loan – such as a housing mortgage – the lender will check both your credit scores, and your spouse’s bad credit history may result in your getting a higher loan interest rate than if you were to apply for the loan by yourself.
What Should I Do To Protect My Credit Score If My Spouse’s Credit Score Is Very Low?
Financial experts recommend one or more of the following to protect your credit score:
- Avoid co-signing credit agreements with your spouse especially if he/she has bad credit.
- Limit the number of credit accounts where you or your spouse is an authorized user.
- Keep your checking accounts separate.
- Take control over your spouse's finances if he/she has bad credit to ensure that all payments are made on time and that spending is controlled.
- Make sure you know about your spouse’s finances and other important documents, particularly retirement funds, credit cards, power of attorney, wills and other trust documents, life and health insurance policies, business loans.
- Don’t bail your spouse out if he/she has credit problems so that he/she will learn to be more judicious of his/her credit habits and credit score, and so that your own credit score won’t be affected.
- Make a family budget and stick to it.
- Always keep an emergency fund.
What Is Community Property And How Does This Affect My Credit Score If I Get Married?
Community property means any property or income that you acquire during your marriage. Some states in the US are community property states, where any income or property acquired during the marriage is considered as jointly owned. This also includes any debts incurred during the marriage. If you are living in a community property state and your spouse applies for a credit card in his/her name while married to you, you are liable for that debt – and it will appear on your credit report and affect your credit score – even if you never knew the debt existed.
If you invested in property while living in a community property state and later decide to move to another state that has different laws, the rules regarding your property in that state will apply. This is because your property remains in that state.
The following are community property states: Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Comments
Johny March 25, 2009 08:25:11 PM 8:25 PM I would always go with separate accounts because each individual is different in his/ her financial habits. This shouldn't result in a bad credit report because of one's negligence.
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