Legal Question in Family Law in Ohio

In Ohio, there are two aspects to you single question, "am I liable?" First, we have to determine whether you are liable to the credit card company for the purchases you made. There is a distinction between being a co-account holder and merely an authorized user. An authorized user does not have any liablity for the purchases made. But a co-account holder will be liable for the amounts charged, regardless of who charged them. Without seeing the credit card agreement, I could not tell you which category you fit in.

If you are in a divorce, then the divorce, then the divorce court must first identify all marital property and debt and divide those equitably between the parties. If the court orders that you pay the debt on the credit card (or a portion of it) your failure to do so could subject you to contempt of court charges (and the same is true of your husband were the court to order him to pay all or some of that debt).

The court may take a close look at the nature of the purchases. It will not matter to the divorce court that you are only an authorized user rather than a co-account holder since the purchases would have taken place during the marriage. But if the nature of the purchases shows that they were being made by you to simply load down your soon to be ex-husband with debt, then the court may order that the debt for that credit card is all yours. But if the court determines instead that they were for groceries and gasoline or other normal expenses, then the court will be far more likely to divide the debt between you.