Will marrying someone with bad credit hurt your credit?

Answer 1

Although it ultimately can hurt you in other ways, the act of marrying someone with poor credit does not in itself hurt your credit. Unless you were on the credit application or added as a user later, anything they do in their name alone belongs to them. Even in community property states where the debt (if obtained during the marriage) belongs to both no matter whose name it's in, this only really applies in practice during a divorce when dividing the marital obligations. At no point will the husbands creditors report information on a wife not on their credit application (or not added later by the consent of both parties). Whoever they gave the debt to is the responsible party (however, should the debtor die they may seek money from the debtors estate which could present a problem). There are many married couples where one has a very low score and the other a very high score. Now, the caveat is that very few couples are able to successfully manage the household finances when one of them handles money poorly. If the bad credit is indicative of poor financial decisions, this may be cause for concern. If the bad credit comes from past mistakes or unusual circumstances that are unlikely to bring both of you down later, you have less reason to worry.