Dear Liz: You’ve mentioned how important it is for spouses to each have credit cards on which they are the primary account holder. My husband died last year. We had a credit card with statements that showed the charges we each had made on our separately numbered credit cards. I found the account was in his name only. I had to get a new credit card in my own name, and the credit limit dropped from $75,000 to $7,000. Hope this warns others.
Answer: It bears repeating that most credit cards these days are not joint accounts. If two of you are using a card, one is probably the primary account holder and the other the authorized user.
After a primary account holder dies, credit card companies are often willing to work with surviving spouses who were authorized users to establish new accounts. But as you experienced, the credit limits for these new accounts may be much lower than those of the original.
Yes, this happened to me. My unlimited credit line was lowered to $3,000 from Chase Bank. I had a card in my name with the same company which was not affected. Two different rewards so I wanted to keep them both but the 3k limit was useless to me so I cancelled my oldest credit card. Chase Bank did not care.
I’m so sorry that happened. Those low limits can be a shock when you’re used to higher ones…plus they’re not great for credit scores.