George and I were married for over 41 years… I moved from my parents’ apartment into an apartment, and then a house, with him… we both worked until our first daughter was born, when we made the decision that I would be at home with the children… in those days you could do that, if you were careful with expenses… I went back to work when the girls were in high school…
About ten years ago we realized that I didn’t have any credit history, although for many of our years together it was my pay cheque that covered the credit cards, mortgage and other bills… I had credit cards with my name on them, but they were all under George’s name, and thus his credit… the house mortgage was in both of our names, but I learned that mortgages aren’t part of credit checks and so didn’t count… so we took the time to go to the bank and get a credit card in my name, as well as a line of credit… it wasn’t big, and I didn’t use it too much, and was always sure to pay it on time… just enough to get myself a credit record…
George died on March 5th, 2012… he had a massive coronary while driving home from work, and must have lifted his foot off the gas pedal… the car drifted across the street and up into someone’s yard where it pushed in their fence… a pedestrian saw this happen, called 911 and stayed with him until the paramedics arrived… one small miracle was that he didn’t hit anyone and the car only hit a fence and not someone’s house… he was rushed to the hospital but they were not able to revive him…
The next morning my younger daughter was with me at home and she called the phone company because we hadn’t been able to find his cell phone and wanted to be sure it hadn’t been picked up by someone who was running up charges… first of all, with the privacy laws they insisted on talking to me before dealing with her, so I gave them permission to have her be on the list of people who could discuss our telephone information… they chatted with her and got his cell phone disconnected…
Then they asked to speak with me again… and proceeded to do a credit check to see if I could keep my telephone services… thankfully I did have my own credit, although I was certainly scared for those few minutes that I was on hold… what was particularly frustrating about this event is that we had been loyal to this telephone company for our entire marriage and had used them for our television and internet connections as well…
That credit card was all I had for a number of weeks following George’s death… although I had insurance from a number of sources, none of that money turned up for a very long time, and I had to live off that credit card, to cover all the sudden expenses, as well as the ongoing ones…
If you are a married woman and have only been using your husband/partner’s credit cards, you really need to get your own credit card which will give you a credit rating… you want to do this sooner rather than later, as you need to have had the card for a certain length of time before you actually get a rating…
our wedding day, August 1, 1970
