My wife and I don't stay at IHGs very often but we both have the Chase IHG credit card. We also have separate IHG accounts - I had her open an IHG account when she applied for the credit card.

I see no incentive to have both free nights and bonus points going to a single account. We redeemed our free nights back to back and even got them linked together through the hotel so we never changed rooms. You could do the same.

The biggest 'catch' that I see is that the credit card terms state 'your' (quotes mine) IHG account. The IHG account that both of you have listed is in only one of your names. I'd recommend getting a different account for the person whose name is not on the account.

If it were me, I would open the second IHG account for your spouse (assuming the current account is in your name) as soon as possible/reasonable (I wouldn't lose sleep over this, but would do it quickly) and then get that new account number attached to your spouse's account before the 70K bonus posts by calling Chase.