What Happens to Your Credit When You Get Married? (2024)

FAQs

What Happens to Your Credit When You Get Married? ›

Tying the knot does not affect credit history or credit scores. In fact, the credit bureaus don't even track marital status. Your credit reports and credit histories remain separate, so there's no such thing as a marriage credit score.

Credit histories and scores don't combine when you get married. Your credit history and scores are yours and yours alone, and your marital status is not included in your credit reports. But if you have a shared account or you're an authorized user of your spouse's account, you could affect each other's scores.

Marriage has no impact on the credit score of either spouse, but if your spouse has poor credit and you apply for a loan or credit jointly with them, their low credit score could hinder your ability to qualify for a loan—or lead to higher fees or interest rate charges than you'd get if they had a higher score.

What Happens to Debt When You Get Married? Any debt each party may have before marriage remains separate unless the spouse is added as a co-signer. In this case, the so-signer may be liable if the debt is not repaid.

Key Takeaways. Marrying a person with a bad credit history won't affect your own credit record. You and your spouse will continue to have separate credit reports after you marry. However, any debts that you take on jointly will be reported on both your and your spouse's credit reports.

You are generally not responsible for someone else's debt. When someone dies with an unpaid debt, if the debt needs to be paid, it should be paid from any money or property they left behind according to state law. This is called their estate.

After getting married, couples should consider changing their withholding. Newly married couples must give their employers a new Form W-4, Employee's Withholding Certificate within 10 days. If both spouses work, they may move into a higher tax bracket or be affected by the additional Medicare tax.

Most auto insurance companies offer lower rates to married couples because they are often considered more stable and less of a risk than unmarried policyholders. Beyond an overall lower rate, auto insurance companies also commonly offer special discounts for those with multi-car or home-and-auto-bundled policies.

The short answer is no. In and of itself, marriage will not directly affect credit history or credit score, as it does not get reported to the three main credit bureaus: Experian™, Equifax^® and TransUnion^®. Your credit history belongs to you, as an individual.

If there's no money in their estate, the debts will usually go unpaid. For survivors of deceased loved ones, including spouses, you're not responsible for their debts unless you shared legal responsibility for repaying as a co-signer, a joint account holder, or if you fall within another exception.

What happens financially when you get married? ›

Being legally married means your spouse's income (and debt) are now yours. If one of you runs up a huge credit card bill, you are both on the hook when the bill comes due. The good news is that many couples can cooperate and work together to address financial issues early in their marriage.

If you live in a community property state, you probably will be responsible for debts accumulated by your spouse during the marriage. (These states are California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Wisconsin, and Louisiana, while Alaska, South Dakota, and Tennessee make it optional.)

3. Getting married impacts credit scores. FALSE. Credit scores aren't impacted in any way just from tying the knot.

However, one thing you might not look forward to sharing upon marriage is each other's debts. Any assets or debts you enter a marriage with are considered your own separate property forever, unless you commingle them with shared funds or add your spouse to the account.

In short, the answer is no: it is illegal for a spouse to open a credit card in his or her partner's name. This may come as a surprise to some, but there is a simple explanation behind the criminal denotation. You may think that a credit card is just like a shared bank account, but that's not true.

Being legally married means your spouse's income (and debt) are now yours. If one of you runs up a huge credit card bill, you are both on the hook when the bill comes due. The good news is that many couples can cooperate and work together to address financial issues early in their marriage.

Even though changing your name won't change your credit score, you should report the name change after it's been officially changed to your financial institutions, like your credit card issuer, student loan provider or mortgage lender.

If you've recently changed your name, you'll need to update your important documents and accounts with this new information. That includes your credit cards — especially to avoid your transaction getting denied by a merchant or service provider who asks for identification.

You can open a joint card or have the spouse with the lower credit score become an authorized user on the other's credit card. Just be aware that some cards charge a fee for authorized users.