Question:
Dear Steve,
I got a student loan from MyRichUncle. After graduating I received information on all of my student loans but not MyRichUncle and didn’t think anything of it. A few years later I pulled my credit report and there was passed due payments for younomics. This was my MyRichUncle loan. I also found out that the information for the loan was being sent to the address of the original loan and not my current address. By this time my loan was over $2k passed due and had more than double the original loan.
The loan is now being handled by University Accounting Services and I have consistently payed on the loan since finding out about it, but have never been able to catch it up. I recently put my entire tax return toward the loan, $1040. However, they loan no longer appears on my credit report. I am trying to pay off debt in the way that would be best for my credit.
Should I catch the loan up before paying off credit cards?
Should I keep paying on the loan at all?
Kristin
Answer:
Dear Kristin,
The loans from MyRichUncle have been a mess. Many are unable to be validated and when pressed they back off. Those loans have since gone on to other debt buyers. The trail of documentation is murky on them.
One approach is to ignore the loan and if sued over it and the loan is outside the Statute of Limitations (SOL) in your state, you can raise that as a defense.
But since you’ve been making payments recently that restarted the SOL clock for you.
It’s not clear exactly how much the current debt owner and/or collector claims you owe on it.
The fact the loan no longer appears on your credit report is interesting but not authoritative. You can still owe a debt not listed on your credit report since reporting by creditors is voluntary. A credit report is not a listing of all debt you legally owe. It is just a listing of debts some creditors may have reported to one credit bureau or all.
Depending on how much you still owe on this debt I think you have two logical scenarios. The first is to hunt down the account with the last party that contacted you about it and attempt to discover what the balance is.
The second approach would be to find a debt collection attorney in your state to contact the owner/collector and attempt to even see if this is a debt that can be legally collected since it may not be able to be shown to be a valid debt anymore.
Please update me in the comments below and let me know what you decide to do.
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Question asked.
I answered your question about your MyRichUncle loan.