Are you in an income-based repayment program? Have you been repaying your federal student loans for more than ten years? Have you tried to work with your servicer on a more reasonable payment plan? -or- Are you in default on your federal student loans? And have you been unemployed for at least 5 of the …
On November 17, the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice issued a 15-page document titled “Guidelines For Department Attorneys Regarding Student Loan Bankruptcy Litigation.” According to the memo, these guidelines aim “to enhance consistency and equity in the handling of [student-loan] bankruptcy cases.” These guidelines are bullshit and won’t do anything to …
The Department of Education just released a guidance document to the Department of Justice on what they feel should be done to allow people to discharge federal student loans, partially or entirely. While I applaud the efforts by the Department of Education, it seems like we’ve watched this movie before. This guidance is just that, …
“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass – a idiot”. – Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist About a year ago, I blogged on the bankruptcy case of Tamara Parvizi, a 51-year-old unlicensed medical doctor who sought to discharge $650,000 in student debt –most …
Rodger Love filed an adversary proceeding back in January 2020 that Richard Fossey wrote about here. In that Adversary Proceeding, Love made the argument the Department of Education should allow him to discharge his student loans because they “would place an undue hardship upon Plaintiff and his minor daughter if said debts are not discharged.” …
In 2020, Debra Jean Marchus filed an adversary proceeding in a North Dakota bankruptcy court, seeking to discharge about $38,000 in student-loan debt. After a trial, Bankruptcy Judge Shon Hastings wiped out the debt. As summarized in Judge Hastings’s decision, Ms. Marchus began her journey through higher education in 1975, forty-five years before she filed …
Diane Ashline, a 47-year old single mother, worked for 20 years as a dental assistant. Hoping to increase her income, she took out student loans to get an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree from Kaplan University, a for-profit school. Unfortunately, these degrees did not help her financially. Ashline never defaulted on her student loans. …
A common saying when I was young (in the last century) was the old adage that lawyers are people who wish to make a lot of money but are risk-averse. That observation certainly rang true when I went to law school in the 1970s. I graduated from the University of Texas School of Law with …
Tamara Parvizi, age 51, sought to discharge $653,743 in student-loan debt in a Massachusetts bankruptcy court. That’s a lot of debt–just shy of two-thirds of a million dollars. For 15 years, Parvizi took out student loans to pursue several degrees, and she became fluent in at least four languages. Nevertheless, Parvizi never made a single …
Is this the year of Jubilee? Is this the year that distressed student-loan debtors finally get to shake off mountainous debt in the bankruptcy courts? Maybe. This week, Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, filed a bill that would allow college-loan debtors to discharge their federal student loans …