An Iowa appellate court ruled recently that a Income Driven Plan with a zero payment “does not ameliorate the undue hardship”. In In re Martin, out of the Northern District in Iowa (8th Circuit) the lender argued that the debtor was not entitled to discharge the loans because she would…
U.S. Passports Can Now Be Revoked for Unpaid Taxes — Can this Expand to Include Unpaid Federal Student Loans? Right now no. Although there are signs that U.S. Passport holders could face a revocation of their passports in the future for defaulted federal student loans. The reason I say this…
Punitive damages are increasing as more people start challenging errors on their credit reports. “Errors” is a funny word. A creditor will likely claim that it was an unintentional “error” that they reported negative information on your credit. But as it really an error? Punitive damages are on the rise…
Initially, twenty some years ago, I worked on the side of the student loan companies. Whenever someone in the State of Florida sought to discharge federal student loan debt in bankruptcy, I was often trial counsel for the student loan company. Our clients ranged from Sallie Mae, ECMC, TERI and…
Fortunately, there are several laws that provide both protection and damages for consumers facing errors on their credit reports. These include the Fair Credit Reporting Act (the “FCRA”), the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (“FACTA”) and most recently the Dodd-Frank amendments. Credit reports are not only key to obtaining…
During the mortgage meltdown, many homeowners received financial assistance from a fund set up by Florida called Florida’s Hardest Hit Program. This was primarily for folks whose income dropped during the recession. Due to lack of funds, the program has now ceased taking applications. However, there is one assistance program…
Most of our debt collection laws in Florida apply only for consumer debt, not business debt. Sometimes the answer is not quite clear as to what type of debt is involved. What if for instance you operate a business and took out a loan, but signed a personal guarantee. Sometimes,…
Both tenants and third party investors should be very happy that a new federal law goes into effect on June 23, 2018, that protects tenants in foreclosure. Basically additional notice is required and the tenants even have the right to remain in the unit for the remainder of the lease. …
Servicemembers’ Protection from Foreclosure The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, 50 U.S.C. § 3953(c), provides protections from foreclosure for covered personnel where their residential mortgage loans were extended prior to their active duty. Originally this protection extended for only 90 days after the person left military service, but this period was…
Someone asked us recently: where does someone start to make sense of it all – when mounting student loans are crushing them and they don’t know what to do. That’s exactly where our clients stand, there is so much information out there, some accurate, some not so much, and it’s…