Student Loan Discharge

[crash5050]

My wife is 100% Disabled, and draws Social Security Disability, 947 dollars per month. She has about 67000.00 in student loans and she cannot work to pay them off. I have tried working with the JDB's that keep calling and trying to get us to work out payment arrangements, but they want more than she makes per month to get things back on schedule. She wants to work, but physically cannot.

Is there any way to get relief from these student loans. I wouldn't have a problem making payments if they would just be reasonable about it.

Crash5050

[StudLoanGuru]

Couple things to try ...

If it is a government loan:

First, try for a disability discharge. These are extremely rare for government loans because you have to prove that the borrower is 100% disabled and will never have the ability to pay the loan back.

Secondly, if the discharge does not get accepted, you can consolidate the loans through US DOE with an income based repayment plan, where payments would be based on her income. That will make sure it stays out of default going forward so you won't have to worry about a garnishment of her disability check. Don't consolidate it until after you have been denied the discharge because if you do it becomes a new loan and will be ineligible for discharge since she was disabled when she signed the new promissory note.

Make sure you get moving on the disability discharge because that can take a few months. Be persistent and call in every couple of weeks because these things have a tendency to sneak by and you may not be notified if it gets denied.

Hope this helps.

[newstart2012]

Definitely try for a medical discharge if they are government loans. As I recall it took about two months to be approved after sending in the paperwork. Over 100K was forgiven. And send letters to any JDB's you are dealing with letting them know you are seeking loan forgiveness from the DoED. They completely stopped bugging us after we sent in the paperwork.