Refinance with spouse's name? Or just mine?

[Cody Beard]

Say I bought and rehabbed a property with a HML and all the numbers work and everything is fine, and I'm ready to refinance. By doing a very simple and not exact DTI calculation I'm coming to 50% on myself, but 24% with my spouse's income included. Is that the way that it works for a refinance? They take both our income's and both our debts and calculate DTI?

I just spoke with a lender about refinancing and I'm worried that by myself I would not meet the DTI requirements. I ran the numbers several different ways and came up with a percentage between 40 and 50% DTI. But since my spouse and I have the same debt other that student loans, which is minimal, our monthly debt pretty much stays the same, but our monthly income doubles almost. Leaving me with a much lower dti.

I initially planned to leave my wife's name off of my investment ventures so that if something went wrong and I go bankrupt, it's just my credit that's affected and not both of ours. How do you guys handle investment properties and spouses? Include them? or Leave them off so that if you go bankrupt or something at least SHE/HE could still get a loan for something if needed?