Using Fiance's Income Without His Name on the Mortgage

Reader Question: Can I use my fiance's income and not have his name on the mortgage?

That depends on what you mean by using your fiance's income. If you want to use it to help you qualify for the mortgage, then he will be one of the borrowers on the loan. Thus, his name will be on the mortgage. If you use his income as a joint asset, and the lender factors that into their qualification process, then his name will be on the mortgage in some way.

If you mean you want to put the mortgage in your name only, but use part of your fiance's income to help make the mortgage payment each month, then you can certainly do that. The lender doesn't really care where the money comes from each month, as long as the payments are made on time.

This question often comes up when one spouse has good credit and the other has bad (but both people have income). Buyers in this situation want to report both incomes when applying for the mortgage loan, but they don't want the spouse with bad credit to "blow the deal." I don't know if this is your situation or not, but it's fairly common. We answered a question on this topic back in November, over on the Credit Help Blog. So it might be worth a read, if you're in this kind of situation.

Here's the other Q&A session:
Getting a mortgage when spouse has bad credit

Hope that helps you out some. Happy holidays.