I heard from a client today who attended one of our student loan seminars recently. Many of her colleagues in the military recently submitted their PSLF applications and are now starting to get back denials. Despite completing the ten years of payments while working full time for Uncle Sam, PSLF…
I thought I’d take a few minutes to write a follow up to Jeff Gitlen’s informative piece on consolidation of federal student loans over on LendEDU.com. As a student loan attorney, we have learned several tricks to take advantage of ways to reduce student loan debt while avoiding the traps…
I’ve been invited by the Tampa Bay Bankruptcy Bar Association to speak about student loan debt and what can be done – both inside and outside of bankruptcy. This is for the Consumer luncheon on the fifth floor of the federal courthouse if any local attorneys are interested in attending. …
When you contact your private student loan company, you likely will be told the only options are: 1) a payment amount that is much higher than you can afford, or 2) to make an interest only payment which makes no dent whatsoever on the loan balance. Stop that. Read below. …
Part II: What can people do when they have private student loan debt? Private loans don’t have any government programs like federal loans do – payments are not based upon income, there is no debt forgiveness and no protections for someone who becomes disabled and cannot work. However, they…
The tax landscape for student loan forgiveness is constantly shifting. Earlier this year we blogged about disability discharges of federal student loan debt no longer considered taxable. Discharges in bankruptcy for either federal loans under a Brunner challenge or non-qualified private student loans that don’t meet the definitions for discharge…
Just now, I got off the phone with a very sophisticated potential client who is facing a garnishment for his federal loans. This was a very intelligent person and well respected in his field, but he didn’t really know much about how the student loan system worked. His closing comment…
Matt Taibbi with Rolling Stone, wrote a recent piece called “The Great College Loan Swindle” that outlines how we got here. It started with sales pitches that colleges make to kids – comparisons of salaries of those with high school diplomas to those with 4 yr degrees. The value of…
Florida is a state that allows professional licenses to be suspended for non-payment of federal student loans. We had a client who came to us last month after having her LPN license suspended. This is even worse than a garnishment. Rather than 15% of her wages being garnished, which is…
Today, a client elected to have us settle her defaulted federal student loans in full by payment from her 401k. While we normally don’t recommend using protected 401k monies to settle debt, this particular client makes too much for debt forgiveness. A settlement now will likely result in 10% reduction…