This week 60 Minutes aired a student loan story about a Home Depot founder who donated hundreds of millions and raised additional funds to make NYU’s medical school tuition free. While this was a great story, and a compassionate thing to do to ensure that the lower paid physician…
Faced with a nearly impossible standard to discharge federal student loan debt in bankruptcy due to undue hardship, creative debtors’ attorneys and the bankruptcy courts are continuing to create pockets of relief wherever possible. Finding that “non-dischargeability does not immunize the student loan claim from modification,”a bankruptcy court confirmed the…
Many people are facing uncertainty about PSLF for all kinds of reasons. We’ve focused on those who were told they were in the PSLF program only to find out that their loan types didn’t qualify all along, and now they have to start all over. We also help borrowers who…
How can you trust your student loan servicer when they don’t follow the law 61% of the time per a recent Inspector General’s Report? Let’s look at a relatively simple chore – re-certification of income under an income driven plan. What appears to be simple, can have meaningful impact. If…
A bankruptcy attorney colleague, Don Golden, has started a new Podcast, The Fresh Start for Life, and has graciously had me on as one of his first guests. Tune in to listen to our chat where we talk about options to pay off student loan debt. Links for Itunes, Spotify,…
I regularly ask for hardship letters from our clients in our student loan and other debt settlement cases. One of our clients began his letter “Dear Student Loan Sharks”…. I took that part out, but if you read his letter, you would be very saddened by what has happened to…
Our last client of the day yesterday had this to say: “Navient misled me by having me place my loans on forbearance and deferment rather than on an income driven plan, and also kept me on non-qualifying loans for loan forgiveness for public service. Had they guided me through this…
Many folks who have filed applications for Borrower Defense to Repayment seeking to discharge their federal student loans due to fraud by the school, are running into problems with their servicers sending bills that payments are now due — even though the application is still pending and the loans should…
It’s extremely important when consolidating federal loans that you do not add any Parent Plus loans to the consolidation of your own loans. It will taint the new loan and disallow many favorable options. Here’s an excellent example from a current client (Cecelia) who came to see us before she…
Anyone with a federal HEAL student loan, should be aware that additional consequences can occur in the event of default. One of these consequences is exclusion from Medicare, Medicaid and all Federal health care programs pursuant to 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1320a-7(b)(14) for failure to pay your Health Education Assistance Loan(s)…