The issue you are dealing with has nothing to do with community property laws.....it has to do with the "Doctrine of Necessaries."
This comes down through the ages from Old English Common Law, but has been codified into statute by most states.
The doctrine of necessaries is law which states that a spouse is financially responsible for the "necessaries" of the other spouse. This would/could include housing, utilities, food, MEDICAL care and possible others.
However, a claim under necessaries is just that, A CLAIM, and should be sued under in order to compel a spouse to meet the financial obligations of the spouse. The judge will most likely, in such a case, award a judgement to the creditor against the spouse under necessaries. With that judgement, the creditor can attach your assets, income and other non-exempt property.
The problem is, that because the law provides this CLAIM of liability, most/many CA's act as their own judge/jury/executioner and act under the assumption of necessaries for any medical and whack your credit to get non-judicial leverage against you....
And it worked...you paid the bill. The problem is you are now stuck with the credit. In order to get this off you will have to convince the CA that they had no right....which they won't acknowledge. So unless you can GW, you will have to seek an attorney out who may assist you with a suit.
The problem: many attorneys may not advise this, because all legal issues are "interpretive" meaning that a judge or jury will interpret the law and render an opinion. It is possible to get a judge who would interpret or rule against you or at least not grant a judgement because they may rule that the CA has "reasonable expectation of your liability under the doctrine of necessaries."
You can check with your state about licenings/bonding and registration to make sure the CA is legal in your state. If not, you might seek on technical grounds that they were not legally authorized to act as a third-party collection company within your state, nor against it's citizens, and that reporting against credit is an act of collection and therefore was not permissible by their illegal status.
Anyway, there is no easy or fun way to approach this. The best approach would have been a PFD. With the debt paid, you can look into HIPPA, but this is not always successful either. After that and my above comments there is one sure fire fix....time, unfortunately, time to age it off CR's.
Good luck and stay on top of those med debts....THEY CAN KILL CREDIT quick and mercilessly.
