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  Chapter 10
  Family Issues
  Community Property
  Authorized Users
  Marriage as a Reckoning
  Secrets are Not a Good Sign
  Divorcing Into Bankruptcy
  Creditors May Not Care
  You Do Have Recourse
  A Better Way to Break Up
  Establish Your Own Credit
  Helping Family Members
  The Promissory Note
  Conclusion
  Previous Chapter
  Next Chapter
  Contents

 

Family Issues

A marriage is more than a blending of life-styles, furnishings and families. It’s a blending of credit scores. Sometimes this combination is for the better; sometime it’s for the worse.

Your spouse has considerable ability to mess up your credit score with his or her actions or debt, even if it occured years ago. This is a connection that is unlike any other. Other family members—parents, children, siblings—aren’t automatically connected to your credit. But your spouse is.

It’s rare for married people to have very different credit reports or credit scores. Even though a husband and wife almost always have a slightly different score, they usually end up within 50 points of each other after several years of marriage.

But even your extended family can mess with your credit, if you aren’t careful. In this chapter, we’ll discuss how to be careful.

Next: Community Property

 

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