Partner has old credit card default, is a joint account wise?

shonsay

Hi!

First time posting for a while so apologies if this is in the wrong topic.

My fiance, back in his youth, was financially foolish and to cut a long story short he had a credit card which he racked up a few thousand on and then didn't pay. This was well over 10 years ago (maybe 12-15 years ago). At the time he was a student and didn't have the means to pay, however I totally agree it was irresponsible of him and he should have worked it out with them, but me being preachy-von-holier-than-thou doesn't help us now!

I have always been really good with my money and have always repaid and kept up to date with all of my debts. I have a decent credit rating as such, so I believe.

As we are now saving for a wedding and hopefully attaining a mortgage in the near future, we are looking to open a joint bank account. I am concerned that somehow I will have my credit rating tarnished by his old debt. Is this a sufficiently long period of time for his old debts to have been wiped from his credit file? Does the bank he had the credit card with not have a permanent record of this kind of thing?

Thanks in advance for any advice!:beer:

SeanG79

defaults from over 6 years ago will not show up now.

I suggest getting a copy of his credit reports from all 3 main agencies (experian, equifax and call credit), then you will know exactly where you both stand

DUTR

shonsay wrote: »

Hi!

First time posting for a while so apologies if this is in the wrong topic.

My fiance, back in his youth, was financially foolish and to cut a long story short he had a credit card which he racked up a few thousand on and then didn't pay. This was well over 10 years ago (maybe 12-15 years ago). At the time he was a student and didn't have the means to pay, however I totally agree it was irresponsible of him and he should have worked it out with them, but me being preachy-von-holier-than-thou doesn't help us now!

I have always been really good with my money and have always repaid and kept up to date with all of my debts. I have a decent credit rating as such, so I believe.

As we are now saving for a wedding and hopefully attaining a mortgage in the near future, we are looking to open a joint bank account. I am concerned that somehow I will have my credit rating tarnished by his old debt. Is this a sufficiently long period of time for his old debts to have been wiped from his credit file? Does the bank he had the credit card with not have a permanent record of this kind of thing?

Thanks in advance for any advice!:beer:

Is that going to be a the dealbreaker?

than_prutt

SeanG79 wrote: »

defaults from over 6 years ago will not show up now.

I'm just wondering whether this will still be the case if the defaults are unsettled. Can the lenders keep applying the defaults if the account is still unsettled?

m4rc

than_prutt wrote: »

I'm just wondering whether this will still be the case if the defaults are unsettled. Can the lenders keep applying the defaults if the account is still unsettled?

No, a default is applied when the account is defaulted, sometimes they are applied later but you have a right to get them to change this. It can't be applied twice, and after 6 years it stops showing on credit only exception would be if they managed to take it to court and get a CCJ as this would show, but after that amount of time if there has been no correspondence from them it's very unlikely they would try, and if they did there is a strong case to get it thrown at anyway.

To the original poster, if you want to get a mortgage together you will at some point be financially linked, so you may as well get on with it. It may well dent your credit history, not because of this old debt but if your partner doesn't have a good up to date history (no credit means not much of a history, so it doesn't mean he is in debt) then it will have an impact. Do it now and then in a couple of years it should have bounced back as long as he doesn't do anything negative with credit in the meantime.

shonsay

Yes, I suppose it has to happen sometime! Thanks for the help everyone!