A Debt Collector is Trying to Get Me to Pay An Old Private Student Loan

“Dear Steve,

I listed a private student loan, for a vocational school. I don’t know if it was discharged or not. How can I tell be looking at my bankruptcy discharge papers? The loan was once again sold to some collector after 6 years, and they are now trying to collect. The loan no longer shows up on my credit report, although it did several years ago, and listed as “discharged through bankruptcy” on one of the credit reports.

Thomas”

Dear Thomas,

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It seems the first place you should go for a definitive answer here is to meet with a local attorney who is licensed in your state or find a consumer attorney through NACA.net.

Since it has been so long it would be very informative to know if the statute of limitations has since expired and the collector can’t take any legal action to collect the debt.

As far as being discharged in the bankruptcy, that might be exactly true because the debt may have not been exempt from a bankruptcy discharge. Frequently the vocational schools do not qualify for bankruptcy protection. See These Private Student Loans Can Be Easily Discharged in Bankruptcy for more on this.

You might need to consult with a local bankruptcy attorney who is licensed in your state to see if there is anything else you need to do to make sure your loans were eligible for discharge at that time and thus discharged.

If the loans are now outside the statute of limitations your could discharge them now but there isn’t any need to do that if they already were.

Please post your responses and follow-up messages to me on this in the comments section below.