If you have a Borrower who's wife/co-borrower has $20,000 credit card debt unknown to the Borrower, can you discuss this with the Borrower? This info was obtained via credit bureau report. Can you make this known to the borrower? It seems like this specific topic has been discussed before and I apologize, but I couldn't find it anywhere!

My first reaction would be NO! The debt is hers, and you could be involved in divorse court hell if it was brought up, and he does not know about it. (She could be using the credit to prepare for her future without him, or he could be fully aware of it if it was used for her to pay some personal -her side of the family- emergencies.)

If however the application were denied for credit reasons, and the credit card debt was the reason for the decline, then you would be responsible for providing an adverse action notice to the parties.

Stay low on this one - had it happen before and if the spouse does not know, the ramifications are not pretty.

Ditto Jax's response. I would handle this with the fact that each of these folks is my customer. While there is no expectation of privacy between the applicants, per se, there is also no need to divulge more information than necessary.

If I denied them, I may say only "excessive obligations" and I would resist saying there is this $20M credit card debt outstanding.

I don't really know what either of them has in mind or what they have communicated to each other. I would handle the transaction as all others, professionally and discretely, respecting each persons confidentiality.