Do Minors Have Credit Reports?

Credit reports are collections of information related to a person's lending and debt history. This information is provided by lenders to companies called credit reporting agencies. Any person who has been issued a credit card or a loan has a credit report. Although credit can be legally extended only to adults, some minors also have credit reports. A minor can develop a credit history in a number of ways.

Laws

To receive credit, a person must sign a legally binding contract in which he agrees to the terms of the loan. The exact age at which a person is legally allowed to sign a contract varies by state, although it always is between the ages of 18 and 21. A minor is not legally allowed to take out credit by himself before age 18 and cannot legally have his own loan or credit line.

Joint Accounts

Although a minor cannot have his own credit account, he can have a joint account with a family member. In this case, the family member takes out his own line of credit and adds the minor to the account. In that situation, the lender reports the account to the credit reporting agency, which generates a file for the minor and begins to add information related to the credit account to which he is attached.

Applications By Minors

Although a minor is not legally allowed to receive a credit card, a credit card company may inadvertently issue him one. Credit card applications include a section in which the applicant is asked for his date of birth. Theoretically, a minor could place his real Social Security number on the application and falsify his date of birth. In this case, he may receive a credit card, which would lead to the creation of a credit report.

Identity Theft

Alternately, a person may choose to use a minor's Social Security number to illegally take out a line of credit. According to the website ID Theft Assist, incidents in which adults stole the identity of minors rose throughout the decade of the 2000s. While 6,512 cases of this form of identity theft were reported in 2003, 10,835 were reported in 2006. Often, the person who steals the child's identity is a parent or other relative.