I’d certainly *ask *to see the credit score of someone I was moving in with, but I wouldn’t go behind their back, for the simple reason that why would I be thinking of moving in with someone I trust so little?
As for checking the credit score of someone you’re planning on having coffee with on Thursday… that’s crazy, and crazy is not suitable dating material.
Well keep in mind most of the people who feel the need to do a background check other than a cursory Google search on the person’s name are probably suffering from their own severe issues.
I don’t think you need to have the entire village approve of a potential date, but a little common sense is required. I’m alway surprised when I hear stories of people moving in together or getting married and one of them turns out to be something the other person didn’t expect. You never met this person’s friends or family? You never stopped by their workplace or met their coworkers? Your friends and family never offered an opinion on this person?
A better question is why are you attracting deadbeats, douchebags and gold diggers?
In one of my grief groups, I met a widow whose husband was something she didn’t expect. She didn’t know until his death that he had lied about virtually everything. Of course, the neat trick was that he had some people in on it and everyone else fooled as well.
For example, his entire family went along, for some unknown reason, with his scheme to change his age. The weird thing was that he claimed to be older than he really was.
He had a job as an engineer and everyone knew he was a graduate of X university, only he had never gone there and had no engineering degree.
It was a very weird story, but if you can fool that many people, you’re good.
It just seems ironic to me that you’d do a background check on someone to see if they’re trustworthy, but by doing so you undermine trust right off the bat.
A few people have posted anecdotes of a spouse being a complete fraud, but I’d like to think that those are rare and isolated cases. And I don’t think that a background check would have revealed much about those people anyway.
I’ll chime in here to say that in my life I’ve known at least two truly pathological liars, and they were both very plausible and fooled many people.
The trick seems to be that pathological liars lie seemingly for the hell of it; sometimes their lies are self-benefiting and sometimes they are not. Folks understand liars like themselves (who lie basically only for some significant purpose) have a hard time dealing with someone who lies with such abandon: you would think that someone who lies a lot would be easier to detect but the reverse seems to be true. Plus, normal people, however unpleasant and immoral, feel at least some guilt (or at least uneasiness) about lying; from what I’ve observed, pathological liars don’t. This makes them very convincing.
Thank you. Seriously. Not only are you demonstrating that you don’t trust the other person, but you’re demonstrating that YOU aren’t trustworthy.
When I worked for the PI, we’d occasionally get calls asking us to look into a potentially cheating spouse (we never did that kind of work). My boss’s response to those callers was always the same. “You’ve already reached a level of distrust that brought you to me. Save your money and get out of the relationship – you’re done.”
It’s actually quite hard, and almost always illegal to do what the OP claims is common. :dubious:That’s why I doubt it is being done much. Look at the trouble the new TSA Director is getting into over this.
The sad thing is that a good credit score is not a good predictor of someone’s finances.
It is a good predictor, it’s not even close to being a perfect predictor.
this is a really good point. In fact, it is a significant reason that when I start dating/getting close to someone, I’m interested in meeting their friends and family and vice/versa. you learn a lot about the other person.
Some people are good liars. But more often than not, people get taken by ride not because the other person is such a good liar, but because one person is simply very gullible and doesn’t pick up on red flags.
I think your partner’s financial condition is not off-limits if you are getting into a committed long term relationship. Frankly, my credit when I got married was pretty lousy for various reasons. So I guess I wouldn’t have made the cut today.
Unfortunately, things are more complex now and when you get into marriage, its probably a good idea if you know that your new wife owes $100,000 on a timeshare in Venezuela that you are never going to use. However, if you are planning to get married, especially later in life when you may have some assets, I would tell you to go to a financial advisor to shake out a lot of this stuff before you tie the knot. No reason to sneak around on them.
But checking a date’s financial history isn’t creepy as much as it is overbearing. For one thing, dating is just that, its dating. I guess it could be for some people, but every date you every go on isn’t an interview for your potential mate and life partner. Go out, have fun, have some beer, get laid. Move on. A credit history won’t tell you of I have HIV or if I got five women pregnant and badgered them into getting abortions.
Anyone who pulls up my records for a date just isn’t something I would want to be involved with. It tells me that you are 1) too insecure to trust your own judgment, 2) about as romantic as your local bank, 3) aren’t willing to just live your life and be a little spontaneous. If someone is looking for the perfect mate, he/she doesn’t exist. If its not their credit history, maybe they have a genetic problem that will produce disabled children. Maybe they don’t have a gambling problem yet because they have never been to a casino.
Maybe we dated the same man, although mine drilled me about my financial status on the actual date, not before. He was so amazingly rude about it that instead of being upset or annoyed I just sat back and enjoyed his assholishness. He went on and on about how he didn’t want to date someone who had any debt–ANY debt, including a car payment–and tried to get out of my how much money I owed on my credit cards. He had chosen one of the pricier places in towns to go for drinks, and he also ordered an appetizer, and when the bill came he grimaced and complained that he would never go there again, which was pretty embarrassing for me because I was somewhat of a regular there and knew the server.
Needless to say, that was our first and last date, and that feeling was probably mutual.
Gah, I hate online dating.
That’s the one! 
If you don’t screen dates before the first date, when do you start? Before the third? Before you move in together? Before the wedding? I think people doing serious screening before even the first date have the right idea - you don’t want to go and fall in love with someone completely wrong for you and then ignore things you find out later because you’re in looooooove. Or maybe with a 50% divorce rate, that is exactly how people are doing things.
What is your definition of screening, here? I think there’s a huge difference between finding out if someone has a criminal record (which is, of course, a matter of public record) versus digging into someone’s financials.
If before your first date, you’re paranoid about your own safety, that’s one thing. If before your first date, you’re paranoid that, two years down the road, you might learn that the man you love owes taxes from 2003 and has some delinquencies on a medical bill – well, I think it’s pretty clear how I feel about that.
Up until now, I’d been fairly confident that my common first/last name has kept me safely anonymous from curious web searches. You’ve just turned my online world upside-down! :smack:
Yep, not quite anonymous on the handle. At least it’s nothing incredibly revealing. And I did find a few accounts I’d forgotten even existed, heh.
But if you are going to ignore stuff because you’re in love, you need to grow the fuck up and take responsibility for that rather than trying to learn everything before the “in love” part starts.
Being in love doesn’t require being stupid. That’s the real lesson.
I am not at all surprised that dating has come to this. It’s largely a matter of lust, cynicism and market forces at this point. Especially for women, who typically don’t feel anything for a man until he’s shown he can compete economically. Inherited wealth isn’t nearly as big a draw these days as it once was. It’s not about security, but a checklist of manly virtues - and two of those are that you play the game and produce.
Yes, checking financials is invasive, probably illegal, and cold as hell. But at least it’s honest - if only with yourself, not the other person.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t worry much about falling in *loooooove *with someone completely wrong for me. And maybe I’m old fashioned, but I still think of dating as something that’s supposed to be fun, not as a series of job interviews for a financial partner. And maybe anyone who is so insecure in their own judgment as to do a background check on anyone they date should consider taking some time off from dating, and working on themselves a bit.