How to maintain separate 'My Info' and 'My Card' settings in shared iPhone Contacts accounts?

There are better options to address this so that you aren’t experiencing this issue (it’s happening because you are both allowing the apps to use iCloud sync…so changes you make on one device will happen on the other. Hence the purpose of iCloud syncing. The point of it is not for multiple users to have each others iCloud data on each others devices but to keep all of the devices that you use the iCloud account on synced. That’s what’s happening since you both are opting to both use sync and try to have each others accounts on all devices but not sync {update changes regardless of the ownership of the devices} the others iCloud. Hope that makes sense).

You could do as I suggested and stop letting iCloud for your wife’s account (and vice versa) stop using iCloud sync by toggling off contacts for each other.

You could use a different share method that does not require you both have each others iCloud account on your devices (I believe Gmail was mentioned earlier as an option). You could also opt to just share contact cards with each other and then save them to your own iCloud but if the concern or desire is to make sure you can see any saved contacts in real time that may not satisfy what you are trying to achieve. But ultimately, what you are describing does not sound like a big but the expected result when you are using iCloud to sync….it’s doing exactly that and updating it across devices because you’re both using sync and both have each others account on your devices.

Anthony Bon wrote:

My wife is logged into my Contacts account on her phone, and I'm logged into hers on my phone.

This can be done - in Settings > Apps > Contacts > Contacts Accounts - however …

This cannot possibly be done with contacts stored in iCloud! iCloud contacts are tied to the Apple Account of the iPhone user.

You could, for example, store contacts in your own Gmail account and access the other person’s Gmail contacts. (Of course, this would get very confusing and error prone if there were some additional Contacts source such as your own iCloud account. Bottom line - Keep exactly one active account housing Contacts on each device.)

Looks like a screenshot from your iPad….just curious….do you have her iCloud on your phone solely to share contacts or do you have other data syncing to your phone…such as her emails or are you using her iCloud for access to her purchases and vice versa? Would help to know if there is an absolute need for you to be using each others iCloud accounts versus eliminating these issues by not doing so. By looking at the iPad screenshot it looks like contacts are the only thing being synced to that device. If you both are not wanting contacts to be synced to each other then in the case of the iPad you could toggle off Contacts under her iCloud on the iPad so it won’t be an app using iCloud and causing issues when you make changes on your device.

The same could be done on the iPhone by toggling off any apps under her iCloud on your iPhone that you don’t want using iCloud syncing. I may just be completely misunderstanding what it is that you are wanting to do here though.

Anthony Bon wrote:

I understand how iCloud syncing works. Of course changes to my contacts will show up in my contacts on her phone. What doesn’t make sense is why changes to my iCloud contacts account settings affect her iCloud contacts account settings Not my account on her phone, but her account. iCloud is syncing my account settings to her account settings and vice versa. If I make changes to one of my contacts or add a new contact, it doesn’t show up in her contacts, just if I change “my card”. It shouldn’t work that way, this is clearly a bug. Yes, I could come up with an ugly workaround, like move my contacts to Google, but that’s pretty lame that one of us has to set up a Google account just to avoid this bug.

Thanks everyone for your comments, but the issue is unresolved so far.

The "issue is unresolved" because the system is working exactly as Apple intended. You can let them know you'd like to see something different here:

Product Feedback - Apple

Anthony Bon wrote:

We do this so we can share each other's contacts.

Contacts are shared - one contact at a time - not by sharing the place used to house the contact, but instead by offering the specific contact’s information to the other party so the other party may incorporate that information into their database. That is done by opening the specific contact’s information to be shared in the Contacts app, scrolling down, and choosing “Share Contact”.