Ignoring your debtor’s federal student loans in their Chapter 13 bankruptcy can have catastrophic circumstances. While fixing vehicle, credit card and mortgage debt, you may have inadvertently allowed a debtor’s $100,000 federal student loan to balloon into nearly $150,000 by doing nothing. This is because the standard procedure of the…
One lesser discussed provision of the new tax bill passed at the end of 2017 provides great news for student loan borrowers. Borrowers who have their loans canceled due to death or disability are no longer taxed for the forgiveness. This also applies to those parents who have taken out…
There are a ton of people who believed their student loans were discharged when they loans were simply listed in their bankruptcy. It may have been years before the private student loan companies started to communicate with the borrowers to collect this debt which added to that impression. As it…
If you run into trouble paying your student loan, chances are you’ve been told to “just go on forbearance.” Here are five reasons that is a terrible idea in many cases: The client I just finished speaking with has had a few hardships in her life (health, divorces, low pay,…
Are you expecting a large tax refund this year? If so, and you have had some financial difficulties this year, do NOT file your tax return if you are in default on your federal student loans OR about to file bankruptcy. Instead, some pre-planning is in order. For federal students…
Parent Plus Loans are federal loans that a parent or grandparent takes out for their child or grandchild to go to college. Learn more about these loans, their high default rates and avenues to reduce this type of student loan debt by listening to our interview on the Crushing Debt…
I’d like to thank the PAF’s Hillsborough Chapter for the invitation to speak at their luncheon today with the assistance of our long term legal assistant, Angie Glaser, now paralegal!! — about Taking Control of Your Student Loans. There were lots of good questions by people starved for information and…
We’ve noticed over the past few months that some of our clients and many other borrowers have been reporting that they are having no luck getting their federal loans in forbearance after they’ve filed a Borrower Defense to Repayment (“BDTR”) application. These forbearances are simple to request and are supposed…
One of our PSLF class actions against the largest student loan servicer in the United States, Navient, was profiled by ABC Action News here in Tampa last week. Our clients are finding they have to basically start all over with their ten years of Public Service Loan Forgiveness because the…
CNN Money recently featured two of our clients, Amanda Lawson-Ross and Bill Cottrill, in a story Student Loan Nightmare: ‘I have to start all over’. These two clients filed Complaints seeking class action status. One observation in the story: “They make it incredibly difficult to take advantage of [PSLF]; you…