Authorized Users

[Anonymous]

My husband and I made each other authorized users on each others accounts to help build up both of our credit scores.  Will deleting an authorized user on your account hurt the persons FICO score the same as closing an account does?

[Lel]

If a person is removed as an authorized user on a credit card account, the account and its history - both good and bad - disappear completely from the former AU's credit report.  There would be no evidence that that person was ever an AU.

If the account was in good standing and was making a positive effect on the AU's scores, then the score might drop.  If, on the other hand, the account had a lot of late payments, then being removed as an AU from that account would most likely result in a score increase.

[RobertEG]

An authorized user is not a legal signatory to the account.  If you do an AU, and then rescind it, the orginal account you have with the OC remains, and is not affected.

It will only affect the score of the previous authorized user due to the loss of that account history in their CR, not the score of the account owner.

[cdtotten]

It depends on the person's credit makeup. When you remove someone as an AU, the whole tradeline disappears from their credit report completely, as if it never existed. So, for instance, if the your DH had a utilization of 15% with the AU card included and you deleted the account and he jumped to 40%, then yes it would hurt.

If the card has a perfectly clean, long history, and has zero or little utilization, then there isn't a reason to remove him.

If there is a single late payment, is a new account, or high utilization, then he should be removed asap if you need his FICO score up.