Participant on Credit Card Account.

[Anonymous]

At some point, my in-laws opened a credit card and added my husband as a user "to make things easier in case something happened to them." Although I was upset that they did this without asking him if it was okay, we did not have my husband removed from the account because it did not look like it was being used and was actually probably helping his credit score.

Fast forward a year when my husband gets his credit report, we can see that his father has almost maxed out the card's $10,000 credit line which I'm sure is trashing my husband's credit score.

My husband is listed as a participant on the account. Is this more similar to being an authorized user or this being a joint account? If it is more like a joint account, can my husband demand to see statements for the card from the last year so we can see what his father has been doing with the card? I don't much feel like paying down the card only to have his father max it out again.

[Anonymous]

Why don't you have your husband call the credit card company and tell them he doesn't want to be an authorized user on the account anymore.  I think to add him as a joint account holder, he would have had to apply, etc. because that would make him responsible for the bill. But as an authorized user, he's only responsible for whatever he's charged on the card. Hopefully that's all he is listed as.