When you get married, the accounts you had in your name are still just in your name. Your new spouse is not automatically added, and your credit files are not merged. Because the items in your credit report will not change, your credit scores will not change.
However, you can add your spouse to your accounts. If you do this, anything in your spouse’s history can show up on that account. For example, if the lender does routine checks (or inquiries), they may see that your spouse had a bankruptcy recently or is behind on some payments - and you can run into problems if your loan has a universal default clause.
Adding spouses to an account can make life easy if you want to share the same credit card account, for example. However, you are on the hook for everything your spouse charges on the account. Presumably you know each other, have discussed financial matters, and are not worried about it - but things go wrong sometimes. This is similar to co-signing a loan with somebody.
It is generally a good idea for each spouse to keep some credit accounts in his or her name. If everything is in the husband’s name, for example, the wife can suffer if the husband dies or if they decide to divorce. Without any credit history, she’ll have to start building credit from scratch.Return to the main page on factors that affect credit.
