Hey, baby, how's your credit?

'Dearly beloved, we are gathered here . . . to exchange credit scores.' OK, you might not want to go that far, but sharing financial data before marriage can help a relationship. If money and relationships are an uncomfortable mix, then credit and romance are downright strange bedfellows.

"You may say you know everything about a person, but you probably don't know anything about his credit record," says Adam Levin, the founder of Credit.com.

A recent TV commercial features a forlorn young husband forced to live with his in-laws because he was clueless about his bride's abysmal credit; it's aiming to spur young lovers to share credit scores. Of course, the commercial's sponsor, the web site Freecreditreport.com, hopes to rev up its credit information sales, too. Romantic partners are a big untapped market. Despite its name, that site enrolls people in a credit monitoring service costing $14.95 a month.

The only Web site where consumers can obtain free credit reports is AnnualReports.com, a site set up by the federal government. "We have found that people often aren't interested in reviewing their credit report until there is a life event which makes them aware of how important it is," says Heather McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for Experian Americas, the parent of Freecreditreport.com.

"The commercial about the couple living in the basement addresses one of those life events where knowing each others credit prior to getting into a financial obligation together would have been helpful." But according to relationship experts, it will take much more than a commercial to get someone to present his partner with a report detailing his sinking debt.

Don't Mention It

In a recent study of 50,000 couples who went through its marriage preparation course, Life Innovations found that "a large percentage of partners don't talk about money or credit issues in any detail at all," says Peter Larson, a clinical psychologist and the vice president of the Minneapolis firm. They may prefer to remain mum about finances and credit, but these issues could become major irritants to the 50,000 couples, Larson adds.

"Seventy-two percent of the 100,000 individual respondents said they wished their partner would be more careful about spending," Larson says. "And 56% say major debts are a problem."

As long as you don't have an account held jointly in both names, you're not responsible for a romantic partner's debts. And debts that someone brings into a marriage under her own name are not legally the responsibility of the spouse, notes Alton Abramowitz, a vice president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

But even when you're not legally liable for someone else's debts, if you're living together, you'll suffer the irritating calls from creditors coming into your home, Levin says.

Look For Clues

Not only is credit an unpopular topic of conversation, it's only human nature to keep a bad record to yourself. "It's hard to bring up because of the shame factor," Levin says.

Often, you don't have to actually talk about credit or pull a report to know that your partner is on shaky ground.

Nancy Michaels, the founder of the Web site MatchGoneWrong.com, believes there can be plenty of warning signs:

• Someone has his or her credit card denied on more than one occasion.

• An older adult has a "temporary" living situation that seems inappropriate, such as living with multiple roommates or with parents.

• Someone pays for everything in cash.

• Spending habits are either unusually frugal or exceptionally extravagant, indicating the person has money management issues.

Trust Me?

For most couples, simply talking about credit is all that's needed, not actually pulling each other's scores or credit records, Larson says. He likens pulling a credit report to a prenuptial agreement.

"It implies a lack of trust," he says. "It means you need an underlying confirmation."

Still, just as there can be good reasons for a prenup, there can be reasons why couples need to exchange credit information.

"Many more couples are choosing to keep their finances separate, but the tradition is still to combine finances," Larson says. "If I had any reason to believe my partner had a checkered financial past, I may want to sit down with a financial adviser and look at credit scores before I made the decision to combine finances. For some couples, this is an important move to being able to buy a house or finance a car. They need the credit of the individual most worthy of that type of financing."

Federal law prohibits anyone from seeking credit information about another individual for personal reasons without that person's consent. So you don't have to worry that your significant other is digging up your credit sins behind your back.

But, if it's true love, credit-scarred individuals may have nothing to fear about baring their scores. The Internet dating service True.com conducted a survey earlier this year of about 2,200 online respondents. In response to a question about whether they would stay in a relationship where their partner had substantial credit card debt or had filed for bankruptcy, 87% of men and 80% of women said they would.

This article was reported and written by Marilyn Kennedy Melia for Bankrate.com.

AIDS: D.C.'s Silent Stalker of Women

By Courtland Milloy
Wednesday, December 3, 2008; B01

Washington Post

Can we talk frankly about HIV/AIDS and black women?

No? I didn't think so.

After all, who cares to tell sassy little Keisha that if she doesn't stop mistaking sex for love, her next mistake could be her last. Of course, that wouldn't be "age appropriate," now, would it?

What about the Widow Jones? Since her husband passed, she has been dating again. Will somebody please tell her that her new dude is on the down low -- surreptitiously having sex with men -- then bringing it to bed with her?

Can't do that, either. Why meddle in her business? After all, AIDS is only the fourth-leading cause of death for black women ages 45 to 54. Let the good sister have her fun -- while it lasts.

You might have noticed that I'm focusing on women and AIDS. Speaking frankly, that's because it's up to women to save their own lives. When it comes to sexually transmitted diseases, too many men are not trying to protect you. Most of the time, they are just trying to have sex.

Quite frankly, you would have thought more women would have caught on by now.

In the District, the number of women living with AIDS increased by more than 76 percent in six years -- nine out of 10 of them black women. The primary modes of transmission: heterosexual men who turned out to be IV drug users, ex-convicts who'd been having sex with men in prison, bisexual men posing as heterosexuals and outright dogs who make a sport of sexual conquest.

Here's another reason I'm talking to women: The District accounts for 9 percent of all pediatric AIDS cases in the United States. Blame the man all you want, but it's the mother and child who suffer most.

Despite two decades of advancement in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, "we're still struggling with how to teach people not to get infected," Don Blanchon, chief executive of the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, said Monday at a candlelight vigil marking the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day.

But how can we teach if we can't talk frankly?

There's certainly no shortage of public service announcements aimed at reducing infection rates among African Americans. But most consist of preachy platitudes, politically correct and "culturally sensitive" pablum: "Stay healthy." "AIDS is preventable."

The results should not be surprising.

"People know how to espouse what they heard, but for some reason it does not stick with them," Barbara Chinn, director of Whitman Walker Clinic's Max Robinson Center in Southeast Washington, told me recently. "They still look at prospective sex partners and say, 'They don't look infected.' "

Failure to tell it like it is -- that's what's really killing us.

"When assessing the HIV risk factors associated with African Americans, one particularly difficult area of debate is that of sexual behavior," said a recent report by Avert, an international AIDS charity. "For example, could the epidemic among African Americans be because, on average, they have more sex partners than Caucasians? Or because they have different, more risky, types of sex? Such questions may seem obvious, but trying to establish answers can be hard, especially when there is a danger that they could be interpreted as racist, or used in racist propaganda."

So let's just forget about the 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found that black teenagers were more likely to have had four or more sex partners than whites and Hispanics by the time they graduated from high school (or should have graduated), and that African American girls were more likely to have had partners who were significantly older than them. African Americans are also more likely to have concurrent partners -- that is, more than one partner at a time, which can make HIV transmission more likely to be passed on to more than one person, the study found.

If ever there was a case for unvarnished sex education in public schools, the ongoing AIDS epidemic in black America ought to be it. Instead of education, what we get more often than not is homophobic nonsense from the pulpits of our black churches.

The District has the highest rate of new reports of AIDS in the country, and the highest mortality rates to go along with it. But the horror of it all barely seeps into our collective conscience.

"While Africa is the global epicenter of HIV/AIDS infection," Chinn told me, "the District is the epicenter in this country, with infection rates in some neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River rivaling those in sub-Saharan Africa."

During a World AIDS Day interview with ABC News, President Bush called his international program to combat AIDS "one of the most important initiatives of my administration" and praised it as a success. More than 2 million people worldwide have received life-saving antiretroviral treatments since the initiative began in 2003, he said.

He made no mention of the AIDS epidemic raging in his own back yard.

Once again, mum's the word. Perhaps in the absence of frank talk, we could at least help young girls such as Keisha by getting them to serve a few weeks at an AIDS hospice. Careless sex would likely lose its sheen once they realize that their lovers could be the Grim Reaper in disguise.