re: Consolidating Credit Debt

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She is often late on payments because she forgets. My thought process is that I can consolidate her debt to one payment that I make monthly and quickly pay the debt down.

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Are you completely transparent with each other in your finances? Is it truly that she forgets (which is worrying, by itself), or that she is mis-managing her personal accounts and cannot afford to make the payments in a timely fashion? Ask, nicely, to see her monthly statements for her checking account and her credit card account. Also, be competely transparent and show her your spending as well. "Forgetting" to pay can be a dodge for a big spending problem. It may be less embarrassing to her to claim that she "forgets" than to admit that she cannot control her spending.

I would not be paying off her debt unless she agreed to go credit-card free for a significant period of time and agreed to stick to a budget that provided a fixed amount for her spending.

If she is old enough and responsible enough to have a job, then she isn't really "forgetting" to pay her credit card bills. I call BS.

ETA: pull a free credit report on her & yourself while you're at it. Show her in actual numbers what her "forgetting" is doing to your credit rating. Perhaps if she thinks about how it may impact your ability to buy a house in a couple of years, she will take her financial responsibilities more seriously.