You know well that your own spending habits could lead to bankruptcy. This is why you’re very careful about how much you put on your credit cards, for example. You budget every month to make sure that you are not spending too much.
However, you’ve recently gotten married, and your spouse doesn’t necessarily have the same spending habits that you do. If they accumulate too much debt, could this mean that you have to file for bankruptcy? Or does the debt belong to each individual?
Joint accounts
It depends on the type of account that’s being used, but it is very common for a spouse’s spending to cause someone to consider bankruptcy. This is because a lot of the accounts that they use are joint accounts, so they are both liable.
For example, perhaps you and your spouse both have credit cards that are linked to a shared account. It doesn’t matter who officially made the charges, even if you can use electronic records to determine this. You are both liable for the payments because you both agreed to make them when you applied for the credit card.
As such, if your spouse ends up with overwhelming debt on your credit card accounts, they cannot necessarily just declare bankruptcy on their own. You would still be liable for paying off as much of that account as you could. In order to eliminate it, you would also have to be involved in the bankruptcy process to clear those accounts.
If you and your spouse do find yourselves facing bankruptcy, just be sure you know exactly what legal steps you can take to resolve the issue.