My wife has an Amex card and recently applied to have a card given to me. I received the card, but nowhere did I give my SS# or authorize an inquiry. I recently checked my credit history and found no Hard inquiries, but I did find the account listed. Is this legal for them to do? Can they list my wife's card responsibility under my account? More importantly, does this hurt my credit? I already have 4 credit cards, all paid as agreed with no late charges. I do not have another Amex card. Balance: $XXXX Date Updated: 11/2005 High Balance: $XXXX Credit Limit: $X Past Due: $0 Pay Status: Paid or Paying as Agreed Account Type: Revolving Account Responsibility: Authorized Account Date Opened: 10/2005 Loan Type: Credit Card
They can list it, as long as it is accurate. In fact, this is how some people start establishing credit, by in effect borrowing the credit history on an account of their spouse. At least they are correctly showing you as authorized user, not as a joint account. If you already have a good credit history, adding another account should have minor short term implications, provided you don't show a whole bunch of new accounts at once. As long as you make sure it is paid on time, it should become another good account listing, provided your wife does not carry balances large enough to depress your debt to credit limit ratio. If you split up, and your spouse becomes irresponsible in paying bills, it would be a negative on you too, at which point you would need to dispute it off since you are not liable as just an authorized user. A couple of joint or AU accounts are probably not much of a problem, but most of your, and your spouse's, revolving accounts should be individual, for maximum diversity of risk. The exception would be mortgage debt, where you would generally want to be jointly liable unless perhaps the mortgage was on property already separately owned by one spouse. You don't want to be in a credit pinch just because some bank merger happens, and especially if one spouse should die. Nor would you want to have to refinance a mortgage or move just when one spouse died.
