Does getting married affect your credit score? getting engaged and kinda worried
genuinely asking does getting married affect your credit score because my fiancée and i are planning the wedding for next spring and i keep hearing different things from different people. i'm in the US (north carolina) and my credit score is around 760 which i've worked really hard to build up over the last 5 years. my partners is around 620 and that gap is stressing me out.
mom keeps telling me that once we're married our scores "merge" and mine will drop. my coworker said the same thing happened to him. but then i googled it and some articles say marriage has zero direct impact on your individual score so no idea lol.
the part that confuses me is the joint accounts thing. we already have a joint checking account and nothing happened to my credit when we opened it. but we're planning to buy a house next year and the mortgage broker said they pull both scores when you apply jointly. so even if our scores don't technically merge, my partners 620 still affects our interest rate and approval odds right? that feels like it affects my credit situation even if the number itself doesn't change.
tried calling experian to ask directly and sat on hold for 45 minutes before giving up. checked their website and the FAQ says "marriage itself does not affect your credit score" but then lists about 10 ways it indirectly can which felt like a very corporate way of saying "yes but technically no."
has anyone's credit score actually changed after getting married and if so what caused it? and for couples with a big score gap, how did you handle the mortgage application? trying to figure out if we should work on my partners score first before buying.