Student loans may be difficult to discharge in a New York bankruptcy case, but debtors might still need to file if they pay the exorbitant fees charged by student-loan debt-relief companies. It’s been a few years since these outfits were in the news, likely because debtors have become more knowledgeable about income-derived repayment (IDR) options. …
New York State Sues Student-Loan Debt-Relief Companies Read More »
Private student loans do not often make the news, primarily because the vast majority of student loans are made by or guaranteed by the federal government, and comparatively few people take them out these days. Currently only $108 billion out of the $1.34 trillion in student loans are originated by private lenders with no connection …
NYT: ‘Robo-Signing’ Strikes Private-Student-Loan Debtors Read More »
Two bankruptcy cases made the news in March that will be of interest to New York bankruptcy debtors. One of them was even a Brooklyn bankruptcy. The first case appeared in the Boston Globe. Echoing my post on the economic risk calculator, a debtor earned $165,000 annually as president of a manufacturing company and borrowed …
Bankruptcy Courts: Parent PLUS Loans Stay, Bar-Exam Loans Go Read More »
When it comes to student-loan debt, state governments don’t usually help a lot. That’s not surprising because most of the loans come from the federal government, which offers a variety of repayment options. However, New York State’s Higher Education Services Corporation (HECS) initiated a new program at the beginning of the year to help out. …
New York State to Offer Aid to Student Loan Debtors Read More »
In the late 1970s, Congress amended the Bankruptcy Code to require student loan debtors to demonstrate that their loans posed an “undue hardship” on them in order to be discharged in bankruptcy. Over time, Congress tightened this restriction, eliminating its seven-year time limit and in 2005 extending the requirement to private student loans. The problem, …
Supreme Court Might Hear Law School Debtor’s Bankruptcy Case Read More »
Just last week, I wrote about LegalZoom’s offer to help sign student debtors onto the federal government’s income-based repayment scheme, even though the process is meant to be done by debtors themselves for free. There were two points from that post: One was that LegalZoom might not be the usurper of traditional legal services as …
New York’s Student Protection Unit Announces Closure of Debt Relief Provider Read More »
Susan Dynarski’s blog post in The New York Times’ The Upshot blog sheds a lot of light on what we don’t know about federal student loans, which are the vast majority of all student loans. Dynarski’s biggest frustration is the Department of Education’s lack of statistical expertise on monitoring this massive debt program, noting that …
NYT Calls for New Authority to Monitor Federal Student Loans Read More »
In early December, the Project on Student Debt (“Project”) published its annual report on the average amount of student loan debt taken out by 2012 college graduates. It found that last year, graduates left school with $29,400 in loans on average, up from $26,600 in 2011. The Project calculates that graduate student loan debt levels …
Report: N.Y. College Graduates’ Student Loans Below National Average Read More »
People paying attention to bankruptcy news throughout the country may have heard about two debtors who successfully discharged their student loans in chapter 7 this year. Typically, seeking a discharge of education debt is difficult to accomplish because debtors must prove that without a discharge they would suffer an “undue hardship.” This requirement came into …
Income-Sensitive Repayment Plans Might Not Bar Student Loan Debtors From Bankruptcy Read More »
Although things looked bleak for federal student loan borrowers a month ago, Congress has legislated away the doubling of the subsidized Stafford loan interest rate that went into effect on July 1st of this year. The rise from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent for undergraduates would have increased interest paid on a 10-year repayment plan …
7 Things to Know About the New Student Loan Interest Rate Law Read More »
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