Quote:
Originally Posted by BeyondtheRainbow
If you are on SSI/SSDI you can get federal student loans forgiven. It's actually an easy process, just one form and something your pdoc fills out. Once they approve it (the hard part) you have 3 years of monitoring where once a year you send in a form saying you haven't made more than a certain amount of income through work. At the end of the 3 years it is all done unless you take out another loan. It does create a tricky tax situation the first year but after that it's nothing. I would have had to file bankruptcy a long time ago if it weren't for that program.
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This only works if you've been declared totally and permanently disabled. Even so, the student loan people like to fight and they do not go down easily. Also, these debts cannot be discharged in bankruptcy so you will have to deal with the loans sooner or later.
Take it from me, the worst thing that can happen to a debtor is to default on student loans---it's even worse than having a car repossessed or racking up medical bills you can't afford. It torpedoed my credit record and for a while there I couldn't get ANY credit whatsoever. Fortunately I qualified for a program that allowed me to pull my loans out of default with payments I could afford, and now I'm paying them back, slowly but surely. I'll never pay them off before I die, so I don't worry much about it. And if at some point I'm told I'm disabled forever, I will definitely apply for loan forgiveness.
The best part of doing this is, of course, not having debt collectors harassing you every day. Plus you have the satisfaction of having faced it head-on and done something to give you peace of mind.
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