contract-law privacy
Spousal rights to credit information
<p>Let's say a husband and a wife co-sign a mortgage or a line of credit or some type of banking product. Based on this "co-signing", is the bank officer permitted to share one spouse's credit report with the other? That is, can the bank officer show the husband the wife's credit report/history and vice-versa?</p>

<p>I would think that this is a violation of privacy since one's credit report is confidential, but I would like to know if any of you experts had any opinions on this!</p>

<p>Banks have internal policies about what and with whom they will share information and they send a copy of that policy to their clients regularly. This is required by the the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. In general, sharing a credit history with a different "consumer" than the one who provided it would be a violation of the GLB. I would not expect them to do so.</p>

<p>Normally, I would not expect the bank to even show you your own credit report. When a bank requests a credit report, they use that information purely internally, they do not provide credit reports to other people, not only for privacy reasons, but usually the contract they have with the credit bureau requires them never to share credit reports with other people.</p>

<p>Any information on the loan application itself will be visible to all parties to the loans.</p>

<p>(By the way, credit reports are not secret information. It is very easy for a person to obtain a credit report for anyone. This can be done by various methods. Most private investigators will provide you with <em>anyone</em>'s credit report for a small fee, perhaps $100 to $200. So, if your wife wants to see your credit report, she will have no problem doing it.)</p>
