Question:
Dear Steve,
I went to law school and got 3 student loans. I graduated in 2008. I have never made any payments on any of my 3 student loans I took while I was studying. I believe they are private loans. Last year I got a document that said the bank (Suntrust) was forgiving one of those loans.
How do I know what alternatives I have if I want to find who has my loans and how can I make a repayment plan? What alternatives does the bank has to collect the money?
Brenda
Answer:
Dear Brenda,
I would not be surprised if they were all private student loans. But there is one way to check for sure. If any of these loans were federal student loans then they would be listed on the National Student Loan Data System for Students. If you can create a login and look to see if any federal student loans are listed, that would rule that out.
But I suspect these are not federal loans because if you were that delinquent you would have been most likely the subject of a tax refund intercept or an administrative wage garnishment. Powers only federal student loans have.
The only way to track down a private student loan is going to be to take a peek at your three major credit reports. You can get them free online at annualcreditreport.com. That would be the single best resource to see if anyone is listing or has listed your other student loans.
Your loans present some interesting issues. At this point the debts would have fallen off your consumer credit report after seven years of delinquency. Additionally, depending what state you live in the statute of limitations may have expired on these loans and you could always raise that as a defense if you were ever sued.
Finally, there is some concern the loans may have changed hands so many times at this point that you’d have to ask for the debt to be validated to even figure out of the person attempting to collect or the debt buyer even has proof you owe the debt.
Keep in mind, in general, the moment you acknowledge the debt is your or you make payment arrangements, you can restart the statue of limitations clock.
From what you’ve shared, unless you live in state with a long statute of limitations that has not expired on these debts yet, or you can’t find any listing of the debts on your three credit reports (you must look at all three) then the probable best option right now might just be to do nothing.
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