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Your credit score can be impacted by your divorce

On Behalf of | Jan 4, 2017 | Divorce

Filing for divorce is something that you know will bring dramatic changes to your life. You are going to have to learn to live on one income. You will be responsible for all of the bills. One thing that you might not realize might be impacted by the divorce is your credit.

There are a few ways that your credit can be affected by divorce. One is that you won’t have your ex’s income to help you with the debt-to-income ratio. This could have a negative impact on your credit rating. However, it might not have that much of an impact if you and your ex pay the debts you have together as quickly as possible.

When you are dividing up the property of the marriage, you have to think about the assets and debts. You need to remember that you aren’t going to be able to count on the divorce order to get you out of the joint debt. The creditors that you have with your ex don’t have to abide by the terms of the divorce because the divorce is a civil judgment that the creditor wasn’t named as a party in.

One way that you can try to protect your credit is to have creditors move debts to individual accounts instead of joint accounts. If you can get all the creditors to do this, you would only be legally responsible for the debts that you have to pay off; however, not all creditors are willing to do this.

If you think that your ex isn’t going to pay debts, be prepared to take a hit to your credit score. This is something that you should think about when you are going through the property division process of the divorce.

Source: FindLaw, “Credit and Divorce,” accessed Jan. 04, 2017

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