Are You Afraid of Dying with Your Student Loans?

A few things I was thinking of today.  First, we received notice from Nelnet of a client approval for Total and Permanent Disability.  This particular client was pretty healthy, but was of advanced age of 76.  I’m pretty sure no employer would be interested at age 76.  He’s been retired for 13 years from a defense contractor and the military prior to that.  Since he flew jets for the military, that was an easy sell for the TPD program.  The fact that the program he used to work on for the defense contractor has long since gone away, plus he no longer has a security clearance and the vast majority of his skills are likely outdated, we leaned on the SSI’s verbage for advanced age.

Under the Social Security Administration’s website at ssa.gov, the Code of Federal Regulations Section 404.1563 states under (e) that they consider that for a person of advanced age (age 55 or older), age will significantly impact a person’s ability to adjust to other work.

I’d rather not compare our client to an old dog, but you know that saying that an old dog can’t learn new tricks.  Well, it kind of applies here.  We sent some of these regs and arguments to our doctor and obtained the physician certification shortly thereafter.  Today, we received the official notice that our client’s six figure loan balance was forgiven.

Second, we once had a client who was told by her servicer that if she didn’t pay her Parent Plus loans, her daughter would have to upon the client’s death.  Not true.  Your federal loans die with you.  This teacher client blew her approximately 20k severance by sending it to her servicer because she was afraid of her daughter becoming liable.  Frankly, the client needed every dollar of  that severance and the paltry retirement benefits to live out her remaining years.  But it was too late for us to help in her case.

Third, the NCLC put out a story yesterday that 3.5 million older Americans have over $125 billion in student loans.  They looked at loans for adults age 60 or older and found that the amount of debt carried by older Americans has multiplied nearly 20 times over the past two decades.  They found that some of the debt was taken out to help family members, but most were still in debt from their own education.

The government can seize Social Security payments, income tax refunds and garnish wages – starting October 1, 2024 when On Ramp expires.

Most of the money seized from older borrowers goes to collection fees and interest, not paying down the principal of the loan says Abby Shafroth, co-director of advocacy at the National Consumer Law Center.

There are ways to help in situations like this.  Please contact us if you’d like to know more.  You can reach us at the link below, or at info@christiearkovich.com or 813-258-2808.  Thank you!