Boston Student Loan Lawyer

Law Office of Adam S. Minsky

5 Steps to Start Tackling Your Student Loans

| Articles Default Income-Based Repayment Income-Driven Repayment Loan Forgiveness Pay-As-You-Earn Private Student Loans Student Loans 101

It’s time to start liberating yourself from your student loan debt.

We’ve got a true student loan crisis – there’s over $1.4 trillion in student debt, and that number keeps on rising. The average undergrad leaves college with nearly $40,000 in student loans, and over 7 in 10 recent graduates are in the red. Twenty-five percent  of student loan borrowers are in distress – meaning they are in a suspended status, behind in payments, or in default. And things only seem to be getting worse.

With this as a backdrop, it’s easy to become paralyzed. The loan balance figures and payment amounts can be distressing. Figuring our your repayment options can be overwhelming. It doesn’t help that loan servicers often provide incorrect or misleading information. It’s easy to feel like you’re lost.

But ignoring the problem isn’t going to make it go away; student loans don’t just disappear. Even if there are only imperfect solutions out there right now, it’s important to take stock of your situation, figure out what your options are, and optimize your student loan management approach. Only then can you start getting on the path to student debt freedom. Here’s how you can get started.Read More

Paying Off Your Student Loans the Right Way

| Articles Income-Driven Repayment Private Student Loans Student Loans 101

If you have multiple student loans, all with different loan balances, interest rates, and lenders, it can feel overwhelming to manage. Should you pay just your minimum monthly payments, or should you pay extra when you can? Which loan should you pay off first? How do you prioritize?

Here are some general rules to consider.

Private Student Loans Before Federal

On the whole, federal student loans have a lot more repayment options and many more consumer protections compared to private loans. Federal loans have discharges available due to death or disability; there is a right to cure federal student loan default; and federal loans typically have flexible repayment options, including income-driven repayment. Private student loans typically don’t have these options or protections. So even if the interest rates on your federal student loans are relatively high, it still might make more sense to pay off your private loans first. You never know what could happen in the future, or when you might need those federal student loan protections.Read More

BREAKING: CFPB Goes After Major Private Student Loan Holder

| Articles Current Events Default Private Student Loans

This is a developing story.

The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has reached a major enforcement agreement with National Collegiate Student Loan Trust, the holder of hundreds of thousands of student loan accounts, about its debt collection practices. This agreement has the potential to impact thousands of student loan borrowers across the country.

Background

National Collegiate Trust (“NCT”) is a collection of individual trust entities that purchased hundreds of thousands of private student loan accounts from commercial lenders (mostly banks) through securitization. In other words, banks bundled many private student loan accounts together, and then sold the bundles to NCT. When student loan borrowers with NCT-purchased accounts became unable to pay, NCT aggressively pursued these borrowers through private debt collectors and litigation.Read More

Student Loan Management When Disaster Strikes

| Articles Current Events Income-Driven Repayment Student Loans 101

It’s a scary time for millions of Americans right now. Much of eastern Texas has been declared a disaster area following Hurricane Harvey. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands have been declared disaster areas as well following Hurricane Irma, and the southeastern U.S. (especially Florida) may be next. The last thing anyone in those areas is thinking about right now is student debt. But what happens to your student loans when a disaster strikes?Read More

Who Is National Collegiate Trust?

| Articles Default Private Student Loans

National Collegiate Trust – formally known as National Collegiate Student Loan Trust, or NCSLT for short – is one of the biggest players in private student loan litigation. But you may never have heard of them. And you may not even realize that they claim to be the owner of your student loan.

Who, or What, is National Collegiate Trust?

NCSLT is not a student loan company; it’s not even a single organizational entity. There’s no call center, no corporate headquarters. Rather, NCSLT is a catch-all term used to describe dozens of individual trusts (the trusts are usually designated by a year and a trust designation – for example, “National Collegiate Student Loan Trust 2006-2”, or “National Collegiate Student Loan Trust 2007-1”). The NCSLT trusts contracts out student loan servicing operations and debt collection to various third parties (such as American Education Services, or AES), so you’ll probably never actually deal with one of the trusts directly.Read More

Mass. Attorney General Sues FedLoan Servicing – FAQs

| Articles Current Events Income-Driven Repayment Loan Forgiveness

Yesterday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed a lawsuit against loan student servicing giant FedLoan Servicing (formally known as the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Authority, or “PHEAA” for short). The lawsuit alleges widespread loan servicing problems that have harmed thousands of borrowers. The allegations against FedLoan Servicing are entirely unsurprising to me, as I’ve written extensively about ongoing problems with this student loan servicing company. But this is a major development and represents an important step in holding student loan servicers accountable for their actions.

Here are some common questions I’m getting about the lawsuit – and my answers.Read More

Public Service Loan Forgiveness: The Latest

| Articles Current Events Loan Forgiveness Policy & Reform

Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) is a program that allows borrowers to have any remaining balance on their federal Direct student loans forgiven after 120 “qualifying payments” (typically under an income-driven repayment plan). Borrowers must work full-time for a public service employer to qualify. For hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of student loan borrowers, it is a critical program that allows people to work in traditionally low-paying sectors that often require advanced degrees.

The PSLF program has been in the news a lot lately, however, and not in a good way. There’s been talk about changing or eliminating the program. There’s been news about the U.S. Dept. of Education denying people access to the loan forgiveness benefit. And no one has been granted forgiveness yet under the program. There’s a lot of uncertainty, which is understandable given PSLF’s complexity and the constant stream of news stories.

So let’s take a moment and review where things are.Read More

No, $5 Billion in Private Student Loans Are Not Being Forgiven

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There was a news article going around this week that had a shocking headline – due to lost paperwork, billions of dollars in private student loans might be forgiven or cancelled. This article, published first in the New York Times, was picked up by other media outlets across the country and shared repeatedly on social media. Student loan forgiveness is, after all, big news.

Except, it’s just a little bit more complicated than that. Sorry to be the bearer of a tough reality check, but we all need to take a deep breath and take some time to learn about what’s really going on here.

Here’s my analysis.Read More

My Testimony In Support of the Student Loan Bill of Rights

| Articles Current Events Policy & Reform

Yesterday, I testified at the Massachusetts State House in support of the “Student Loan Bill of Rights,” which would introduce new statewide protections for student loan borrowers in Massachusetts. Below is my testimony.

If you live in Massachusetts, contact your state representative and state senator and ask them to support the Student Loan Bill of Rights.

Dear Honorable Chairs of the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure:

I am writing to you today in support of S129, the “Student Loan Bill of Rights,” sponsored by Senator Eric Lesser.

By way of background, I am a solo-practicing attorney with a uniquely-focused practice devoted entirely to helping student loan borrowers. To my knowledge, I am the only such attorney in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts – and one of the only in the country – specializing in this area of law. I have a unique perspective on the student loan crisis, particularly as it impacts student loan borrowers here in our Commonwealth.Read More

Student Loan News Summary – June 2017

| Articles Current Events For-Profit Colleges Loan Forgiveness Private Student Loans

Happy summer, everyone. With all the big national news going on lately, there’s a lot of developments in student loan law and policy that are flying a bit under the radar. Let’s bring everyone up to speed.

Credit Report Changes Will Help Student Loan Borrowers Who’ve Been Sued

Starting July 1, the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) will no longer report civil judgments on people’s credit reports. There have been ongoing concerns about credit reporting errors for judgments, since a judgment is often not linked to a person’s social security number. This is a significant change that will have a direct, positive impact on borrowers who have been sued by their student loan lenders.Read More