This has turned out to be messier and more stressful than I initially thought. We have been married for about 3 years now and my wife has a college education loan. In my culture, it's the parents who pay for this and that's her and her parent's understanding as well. However, right after her marriage her parents apparently did not pay for a while and they had folks from the bank knock on their door for a portion of the payments. She or her parents did not have the money and they turned to me. I must admit that I am a bit well off financially than them and I wanted to help my wife I decided to pay a good amount of it. They subsequently never made any efforts to keep up with the payments for about a year when this happened again and I again paid albeit a smaller amount this time. And now this happened again this month but this time I had a serious conversation with my wife where I essentially and politely to the best of my ability asked her to (1) Take ownership of the loan and not leave it to her parents because they always say they'll pay it off but they never do (2) Setup a payment plan with the bank so that we may pay it off in half the time saving interest as we have the money. Since then she has tried reaching out to the bank about 2-3 times in the last month but has not received a response. She gets pissed and says I'm nagging her every time I remind her to call and check.

Here's what's going through my mind: (1) I fear the loan would balloon up to an amount which would be non-trivial for me (right now it's just what I can afford) and we'd have to cut back from other areas (mortgage payments, kid's education, etc.) In my opinion, this is grossly unfair that I and my family take the hit for her parent's lack of responsibility.
(2) I am angry at her and her parents because they take absolutely no responsibility and make no effort to even get us the information we want (they are local and we are in another continent 10K miles away) let alone make some effort to pay the money. Why should I sacrifice my family's well being for their irresponsible behavior?
(3) I am angry at my wife because she doesn't understand my concerns and urgency but instead supports her parents view that I am making a big deal of it and that there are a bunch of other folks who have not yet paid the loan.
(4) I think the bank wants to drag the loan as long as possible so they can make money off the interest. They don't want her to pay up or worse, pay up ahead of time.

At this point I have tried to communicate clearly but nothing has changed - she continues to try to contact the bank over the phone with no success. I feel I should have refused to pay anything in the first place and am now paying the price for being nice. I can refuse to pay from here on but I know that's not going to be possible. My wife will eventually come to be and if there are $$ in my bank account then despite the fact that they for a legit future expense (kid's education), the urgency of the situation will leave me with no option but to take care of this. The other day I heard her mother over phone tell her to ask me to not make a big deal out of it - well then why don't they pay?

It's been one of my longer posts.. if you've made it this far please help!!!!!