Adding Your Name To Someone Else's Account Can Make You Liable For Their Debt

Posted by: Desiree B. | Sep 26,2007

By Desdemona Bandini

 

Opposites attract. I, someone who loves paying my bills on time and fiercely protects my credit, happened to fall in with someone who did quite the opposite with their bills, and considered credit to be free money that may or may not warrant payment, depending on how they felt that day. This of course, caused some problems.

 

I shared a residence with this credit cowboy, and when he had to travel abroad for months at a time, and his bills started to stack up in a pile of confusion, he asked me for help to untangle the mess because he was too far away. Happy to be a Good Samaritan, I obliged and allowed him to add me to his account - so that I had permission to call and find out what was wrong and fix it. I was in fact, not only doing him a favor, but more importantly, I was doing a great service to the credit card companies themselves, by making sure the minimum payments were made, or so I thought.

 

Whether you find yourself in this situation with a parent, loved one, partner, friend or roommate, and you are asked to be added to their account for any reason, beware. I was able to do my good deed and play the mediator to the best of my ability, with the limited resources my friend provided me. I was able to pay the minimum of his mounting debts on time, and clean up some of the bad marks. It was a mere few months, and several dozens phone calls of service. I thought that was the end of it.

 

What I did not realize was that by adding my name to his account, even if it was just for permission to help untangle his messy bills while he was away, I was signing up to be responsible for his credit as well. My years of good credit, was now somehow attached to his, and his years of bad credit was now attached to mine.

 

I was alerted to this fact a year and half later when I applied for and received my yearly free credit report. I get this every year or two just to scan it and make sure it looks okay. When I saw his debt and his negative credit attached to mine, I was furious and concerned. We weren’t even friends anymore! It took a lot of wrangling back and forth for several months with several agencies (who wanted someone to be responsible for his debt), to free my name from being associated with his credit.

 

Afterall, it was I, who was added to his account and granted permission to help his angry creditors get a minimum payment in the first place. Moral of the story, protect your name. Do not get added to someone else’s account or add them to your account, unless you are willing to share your credit with them or visa versa, forever.

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