Ask Liz Weston

Get smart with your money

Student Loans

Q&A: Disability and student loan liability

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Dear Liz: My nephew was persuaded by a recruiter to attend a for-profit technical college. Then, once he entered, his “advisors” persuaded him to take many, many classes — at full price — always handing him student loan paperwork to get more loans. Then they persuaded him to change his major, necessitating a whole new round of classes and loans to pay for them.

The problem is my nephew has Klinefelter syndrome, a genetic disorder. He was not diagnosed until he was an adult and therefore was left with a mental age of about 12. This is what made him so gullible. He did graduate but in the six years since has not been able to find work because it is obvious to employers that he is mentally challenged. Now his training is becoming obsolete, making jobs even harder to get. This means there is no way he will ever be able to pay back the thousands of dollars in loans. Klinefelter is listed in the disabilities registers, but because he can function, any kind of aid is really hard to get. Do you have any advice on what to do about the looming debt?

Answer: The questionable tactics of some for-profit colleges have prompted regulatory investigations and lawsuits. That doesn’t mean the debt that affected students accumulated will be easy to erase.

Many for-profit colleges rely heavily on federal student loans for their funding. If your nephew’s loans are federal, he might be able to qualify for a total and permanent disability discharge of his federal loans, said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of EdVisors, a college resource site.

“He will need a doctor to certify that his disability prevents him from obtaining gainful employment,” Kantrowitz said. “He will also need to earn less than the poverty line annually for the three-year post-discharge monitoring period.”
Kantrowitz has more information about such discharges on his site.
Another option is to consult an attorney, Kantrowitz said. “If he lacked the mental capacity to enter into a contract, he might be able to repudiate the loans,” Kantrowitz said.

Your nephew also may be able to discharge the loans in bankruptcy, Kantrowitz said. Typically student loans can’t be erased this way, but there are exceptions, including one woman in Maryland who was able to erase $340,000 in law school and other education debt after a judge said her Asperger’s syndrome made it impossible for her to hold a job.

“The odds of success are low, but many of the successful discharges involved disabilities, especially when the loan program did not provide for a disability discharge,” Kantrowitz said.

A final possibility, if your nephew has federal student loans, is to sign up for an income-based repayment program. If his adjusted gross income is less than 150% of the poverty line, his required payment would be zero and he would be eligible for the discharge of his debt after 25 years.

Q&A: Student loans and forgiveness

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Dear Liz: I have a rather ugly student loan predicament. You mentioned “the possibility of forgiveness” in a recent column. I feel very strongly that I am deserving (if I dare use that word) of partial or full forgiveness of my undergraduate loans, although the loans from my graduate studies sting quite a bit too. I am not sure whom to contact to tell my story. Do I ask my lender, or do I contact the federal government education department? I get beyond frustrated talking to my lender, as they have employees who can only read from a script and can never help with particular issues.

Answer: You don’t win federal student loan forgiveness with an effective sob story. You get it by volunteering, working in a high-need area or following the relatively new rules for erasing remaining balances after many years of on-time payments. You also can get your federal (but not necessarily private) loans discharged if you’re totally and permanently disabled, you die or your school closes before you get your degree.

FinAid.org maintains a list of some of the forgiveness and stipend options available. People who teach full time in low-income districts, for example, can have up to $17,500 of their Stafford or PLUS loans forgiven under the National Defense Education Act. Forgiveness options exist for health workers and attorneys who serve high-need areas. Students in the Army National Guard may be eligible for its repayment program, which offers up to $10,000 for repaying student loans. AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps and Vista also have stipend programs for student debt repayment.

In addition, the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness program promises any remaining federal student loan balances can be erased after 10 years of payments. Eligible public service jobs include employment with federal, state or local governments or not-for-profit organizations designated as tax-exempt by the IRS. You can find more information about this program at the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid site.

Even if you work in the private sector, you can qualify for forgiveness after 20 to 25 years of on-time payments, depending on when you incurred the debt. Again, see the education department’s site for details.

If you’re finding your payments onerous, you may qualify for the “Pay as You Earn” or other federal income-based repayment plans. If you have private student loans, though, you have far fewer options and consumer protections. You may want to visit the Student Loan Borrower Assistance site run by the National Consumer Law Center to learn more about strategies for coping with this debt.

Q&A: Credit cards vs student debt. Which should be paid off first?

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Dear Liz: I have $8,000 in savings. Should I use it to pay the accrued interest on federal student loans that go into repayment soon? Or should I pay credit card debts of $662 at 11.24%, $3,840 at 7.99% and $3,000 at 6.99%?

Answer: Pay off the credit card debt. The interest isn’t tax deductible, and balances you carry on credit cards just eat into your economic well-being.

Your student loans, by contrast, offer fixed rates, a wealth of consumer protections and tax-deductible interest. You needn’t be in any rush to pay them off, particularly if you’re not already saving adequately for retirement and for emergencies. Federal student loans offer the opportunity to reduce or suspend payment without damaging your credit scores should you face economic difficulty and the possibility of forgiveness. Those aren’t options offered by credit card issuers.

If your student loan payments exceed 10% of your income when you do go into repayment, you should investigate the federal government’s “Pay as You Earn” program, which offers more manageable payments for many people, especially those with large debts and small incomes.

Q&A: Consolidating multiple student loans

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Dear Liz: I have four private student loans that I would love to consolidate so that I can have one medium-size monthly payment instead of four large ones. How do I go about finding a company that will consolidate them?

Answer: If you have good credit and sufficient income — or a willing co-signer — several lenders now offer private student loan consolidation. That’s a change from the recent past, when recession-scarred lenders largely abandoned this market.

Unless you’re able to get a substantially reduced interest rate, though, you shouldn’t expect your consolidated payment to be much lower than the sum of your current payments. Your payment could even go up if the consolidation loan has a shorter repayment period.

You can start your search at cuStudentLoans.org, which represents not-for-profit credit unions. RBS Citizens Financial Group, Wells Fargo, Charter One and other banks offer consolidation options as well. Some lenders offer fixed-rate options and “cosigner release,” which enables creditworthy borrowers to remove a cosigner after a certain number of on-time payments.

Q&A: Student loans and credit reports

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Dear Liz: My daughter graduated from college seven years ago and moved to London. She has not paid her student loans. Do they drop off her credit reports like other unpaid debt? What about the government’s ability to collect? Does that expire as well?

Answer: The government can pursue people who owe federal student loan debt to their graves. There is no statute of limitations for collections activity, as there is on most other debt. Furthermore, the government has powers any private collection agency would envy. The feds can seize tax refunds, garnish wages without a court order and even take a portion of a debtor’s Social Security checks.

Your daughter shouldn’t expect the unpaid debt to vanish from her credit reports either. The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act limits the length of time other negative marks can remain, but that doesn’t apply to federal student loans.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act “is silent as it pertains to government-guaranteed student loans,” said credit expert John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education at CreditSesame.com. “The Higher Education Act allows them to remain on credit reports as long as they’re unpaid.”

There are so many affordable repayment options these days for federal student loans that it makes little sense to default. In cases of extreme hardship or low income, payments can be reduced to zero and the loans would still be considered current.

Your daughter needs to make arrangements to pay what she owes, especially if she ever plans to come home. The good news is that the Department of Education will work with her to get her loans out of default status, and clear up her credit, with an affordable payment program. She can start by visiting the department’s site at studentaid.ed.gov.

Q&A: How to get the maximum in financial aid

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Dear Liz: I’m having trouble finding information about how to structure my finances to get the maximum financial aid for my kids when they enter college. For example, will contributing to an IRA instead of a taxable investment account matter? Should I focus on paying off my mortgage or should I buy a bigger house and acquire debt in the process if I want my kids to qualify for more aid? There’s plenty of advice out there about how to minimize taxes — for example, by contributing to 401(k)s or selling losing stocks at year-end. But I’m interested in legally and ethically shielding my assets from the family contribution calculations used by the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Any idea how I can learn more about the inner workings of the FASFA formula?

Answer: Before you rearrange your finances, you need to understand that most financial aid these days consists of loans, which have to be repaid, rather than scholarships and grants that don’t. Wanting your kids to qualify for more aid could just lead them to qualify for more debt.

Also, the FAFSA formula weighs income more heavily than assets. If you have a six-figure income and only one child in college at a time, you shouldn’t expect much need-based financial aid, regardless of what you do with your assets.

That said, there are some sensible ways to shield assets from the formula, and often they’re things you should be doing anyway: maxing out your retirement contributions, for example, and using any non-retirement savings to pay down credit cards, car loans and other consumer debt.

Using non-retirement savings to pay down mortgage debt helps with the federal formula, but may not help much with private schools that include home equity in their calculations. Either way, taking on a bigger mortgage with college looming is rarely a good idea.

You can get some idea of how much the federal formula expects you to pay for your children’s educations by using the “estimated family contribution” calculator at FinAid.org. Another great source of information is the book “Filing the FAFSA: The Edvisors Guide to Completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid” by Mark Kantrowitz and David Levy.