Spousal cards: Joint account or authorized user?

[Anonymous]

My wife and I recently got married and I'm trying to figure out what to do with my cards. For now, I've added her as an authorized user to my accounts as a method of building her credit, since she basically has no credit history. Would I be better suited to try to get her joint access? 

I'm also curious as to what married folk do with regards to new cards. Do you right away apply as joint? Just go the authorized route? Get each person individual accounts? It seems like there are pros and cons to each approach. Any help is appreciated!

[juggar]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My wife and I recently got married and I'm trying to figure out what to do with my cards. For now, I've added her as an authorized user to my accounts as a method of building her credit, since she basically has no credit history. Would I be better suited to try to get her joint access? 

I'm also curious as to what married folk do with regards to new cards. Do you right away apply as joint? Just go the authorized route? Get each person individual accounts? It seems like there are pros and cons to each approach. Any help is appreciated!

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I am pretty sure you would want to add her as a joint account owner. I think that also makes her as responsible as you are for the debt, 

As an authorized user she wouldn't be responsible for the debt and from what I have seen on the forums it looks like it holds less weight as far as score is concerned. 

[Ragelog]

Joint makes sense but I would suggest each build their own individual credit lines as well just in case things with the marriage don't go well. You don't like starting a new marriage thinking that way but it is smart to be prepared and not have a need versus not being prepared. I believe in the USA currently over 50% of marriages end in divorce so being prepared isn't a bad thing.

[Callandra]

You could make your wife an AU so she gets the history/benefits but not give her a card. Parents sometimes do this with their children as well. If you want her to be legally responsible for all your bills, then joint account is the way to go and either way, within 6 months to a year, she should be able to get cards on her own (even if they're just Capital One or store cards) and she can build her own history. 

[Anonymous]

We're both in the "hope for the best, be prepared for the worst" boat. I don't think that the threat of joint is very high, since we PIF every month. That's part of why I'm trying to figure this out; I've been working on my history since college, while she doesn't have much of a history at all. 

From independent research, apparently most companies no longer allow joint accounts. AMEX in particular has never permitted them. I think we have to go with a mixture of independent cards (2x Discover IT, 2x Sallie Mae, etc.) and her being an authorized user on my accounts. 

[uswala]

I added my wife (with no credit history) as joint on one of my cards (I had only 2 at that time) and this helped her a lot as within a couple of months she got a pre-approval for herself for CapOne Platinum for which she was intatntly approved. As for all other cards we have had since then we have added each other as AU. 

[09Lexie]

I'm joint with my DH on our CU Visa and the CU auto loan.  We are AUs on several Chase CCs and one or two Amex CCs.  The remaining profile, our cards are individual only.  The AUs are great for earning rewards but we have the individual accounts because building your own credit profile and not putting all your eggs in one basket are extremely important.  Hopefully this will never happen but what if I only had AU credit and his accounts were closed or he passed away.  I remember my DM dealing with that issue when my DF died.

Better safe than sorry. 

[uswala]

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@09Lexie wrote:

I'm joint with my DH on our CU Visa and the CU auto loan.  We are AUs on several Chase CCs and one or two Amex CCs.  The remaining profile, our cards are individual only.  The AUs are great for earning rewards but we have the individual accounts because building your own credit profile and not putting all your eggs in one basket are extremely important.  Hopefully this will never happen but what if I only had AU credit and his accounts were closed or he passed away.  I remember my DM dealing with that issue when my DF died.

Better safe than sorry. 

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+1

I have a friend who is also suffering right now. Her husband had all cards in his name and she was not even AU as she did not like using plastics. Now they are seprated and she had a hard time getting a credit card and a car loan.

That is why I would suggest my approach  Add her as joint on a card. Let it report a couple of months or so. Then look for any preapprovals on her name and apply when you get one.

Like in our case we both have some good cards (see my signature. The AU cards are all hers) now and TU scores in excess of 760. 

[Anonymous]

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@09Lexie wrote:

I'm joint with my DH on our CU Visa and the CU auto loan.  We are AUs on several Chase CCs and one or two Amex CCs.  The remaining profile, our cards are individual only.  The AUs are great for earning rewards but we have the individual accounts because building your own credit profile and not putting all your eggs in one basket are extremely important.  Hopefully this will never happen but what if I only had AU credit and his accounts were closed or he passed away.  I remember my DM dealing with that issue when my DF died.

Better safe than sorry. 

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Wife and I mostly had seperate CC's until I found out she was keeping one card in particular near maxed out. I confronted her about it and we both got serious about maximizing our credit. We're not completely there, but I've come up 100pts in a year and she's come up 40 pts just by drastically reducing UTL and getting a medical baddie removed. All this without silly UTL trickery