How to Protect your Credit during a Divorce

Learning how to protect your credit when you are going through a divorce is imperative. Even if your divorce is friendly and there are no hard feelings about the beak up, you will need your own credit. Up to this point, most likely all the credit cards were in both names and this means both of you were responsible for paying the cards. In order to protect your credit, you need to change the joint accounts to separate accounts.

The first thing you should do to make certain whose credit was used for the cards. Ask the credit card companies and if it was yours, ask them to remove your husband or partner from the card. If it was in his name, ask them to take you off the card. The other option is closing the account if the credit card company will not remove a name. However, they will not close it if there is a balance that needs to be paid. You can freeze the account so nothing more can be charged to the card.

When you need to protect your credit, one of the things you will want to do is get a copy of your credit report. This will allow you to see everything from the payments you have made to those that were not. Your credit history and the rating you have as far as credit-worthiness will be included. Check to make sure there is nothing that you do not recognize, because sometimes the wrong information does end up on credit histories.

In order to protect your credit during this break up, if the two of you have assets that are still being paid, such as a car payment or a house payment, that are in both names, you may want to consider selling. Even if the divorce decree hands the home over one party, if there is a loan in both names, both of you are responsible for paying this loan.

Selling the assets that you still owe on will allow you to get out from under the joint debt. This will allow you to establish and protect your credit because you will be the only one with access to the credit card or responsible for making the payment on a home or a car.

For more information about how to protect your credit please visit our “Find A Local Counselor” page, complete the form and we’ll be happy to assist you further.