After all those vicious fights and unending arguments with your spouse, finally you have decided to terminate your marriage. You have filed for divorce and decided to part your ways.

Divorce is indeed an unpleasant experience both emotionally and financially. It can turn out to be an even worse if you do not take some measures to protect yourself from the debts incurred on your jointly held credit cards. Usually debt incurred during a marriage is the joint responsibility of both the spouses, as long as both are co-signers on the credit cards. So if your ex-spouse does not make payments on those cards post divorce, the credit card companies can always chase you for payments. After all the credit card companies won’t consider your personal circumstances!

Thus, jointly held debts can be a real cause of worry after your divorce. That is why divorce lawyers, credit counselors and financial planners always advise their clients to end their marriage without joint debt.

You have several options to handle debts incurred on jointly held credit cards. Depending upon the state of relationship with your spouse, you can choose your option.

The simplest way to evade post-divorce credit card debt problems is to either pay off the balances on the joint cards, or to divide the balances on the joints cards and get them transferred to cards in each partner’s name.

Dividing the credit card debts is by far the best way to handle debts on jointly held credit cards. The first thing you should do is cancel all your joint credit cards, in order to protect yourself from debt run up. Then you can get those credit card debts divided between you and your spouse through equitable distribution.

You can get your joint credit card debts recorded at the early stage of the divorce procedure by filing documentation with the court about the joint credit cards and debt owed the on them. Equitable distribution is one of the last phases in the divorce process, which determines how marital assets and debts are should be divided between the two partners.

Once the equitable distribution is over, you can work out a plan with your spouse and fix up a date on which both of you can have your individual portions of the credit card debts transferred into your individual cards. That will resolve all the confusion over how much you and your ex-spouse are individually responsible for and also prevent your spouse from running up debts.

However, you should also be aware of the fact that if the credit card is in your spouse’s name, then his/her partner is not liable for repaying the balance on this card, provided the couple belongs to a common law state. The only exception to this will occur if the state is a community property state, where both the spouses are responsible, even for debts incurred by one partner. Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin are the states with community laws.

While in community law states the marital debts (be it jointly or singly incurred) are equally divided between the spouses during divorce, in common law states marital debts are divided either like a community law state or they are divided according to the judge’s decision.

However, irrespective of the kind of state you belong to, you should consult a divorce lawyer before filing for divorce. A lawyer will not only help you reach an equitable settlement on your debts but also determine the right legal options for you at such a sensitive stage of your life. So get yourself acquainted with your legal rights to keep yourself away from marital debt problems.

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