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A post on Theresa Sweet’s [Plaintiff in Sweet v. Cardona’s class action BDTR lawsuit] Facebook page says the majority of workers reviewing BDTR claims have been laid off and majority of Ombudsman staff have been fired.

For several months now, we have been of the opinion that while filing a Borrower Defense to Repayment application is free and available, we do not expect to see any discharges any time soon for new applications that are filed after the Cardona class action settlement.  You may expect to see a forbearance due to the filing, but use it more as a place marker to give you time to explore and take advantage of other ways to deal with your student loans.

Please see our last blog re: documents/downloads you should do now to keep track of your records.

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has long since gone away, plus he no longer has a security clearance and the vast majority of his skills are likely outdated, we leaned on the SSI’s verbage for advanced age.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.

So you may have heard by now that all consolidation applications are being processed by Aidvantage.  The online system is completely frozen.  And that most people are being placed into forbearance while the system is frozen.  Just last week, the Department of Ed asked one of the courts for clarification of its injunction order and was told that no clarification would be forthcoming.  So we wait.  The U.S. Supreme Court will have to rule on all this.

It’s important to still move forward however.  If SAVE survives the court challenges, you want to have your Parent Plus loans in place ready to be placed into SAVE.  Even if SAVE doesn’t survive, perhaps one of the other IDR plans is better than ICR.  How do you move forward with the online system stuck, and only one servicer processing paper consolidation applications?

The key is to use snail mail – send half to Aidvantage, wait 45 days until the consolidation is done.  Then send the second half to Aidvantage to consolidate using snail mail.  Wait 45 days.  Then recombine all the Parent Plus loans in a final consolidation application sent to – you guessed it – Aidvantage.

Here’s a review posted recently about our student loan videos:

• I wish the views on this channel were much higher. Christie is both thorough and concise. It’s the best channel on YouTube regarding student loans.

I know that it’s more confusing than normal now with all the litigation and holds put on federal student loans right now.  Processing of IDRs have been slowed considerably – and while you wait, your loans are placed into forbearance.  This forbearance may ultimately count toward IDR but it’s a mixed bag whether it will count if you ask now.