Student Loan + Post Discharge Question?

[Leahnc25]

We filed Chapter 13 in March 2018. My Federal student loans have been in administrative deferment since filing 2 years ago. I have not been able to make a payment towards the balance and the interest is accruing. My student loan balance is a very large amount and I just don't think I will ever be able to pay it off?

I thought about renewing my Income Based Repayment Plan while in Ch13 and try to make some kind of payments but would need to check with my atty before doing that? I am nervous to enter any type of repayment right now though - What if I miss a payment? Ugh - its all confusing

Anyway, I definitely plan to renew my Income Driven Repayment plan once we are discharged in 3 years and very concerned about what the monthly payment might be with the interest being capitalized at that time?

Has anyone been through this? Ill have some relief from my other debts after discharge, but these student loans are stressing me out
Thanks

[justbroke]

The creditor should not bring you out of any deferment status while in an active Chapter 13. I would hope that they maintain that position even if you ask to change into an IBR or other payment status. It would be an actual violation of the automatic stay for them to start collecting or causing their systems to start any collection activity including statements. Of course they are allowed to continue to accrue interest.

You may simply need to wait until you are out from the Chapter 13.

You can, of course, make payments to your student loans while in a Chapter 13. In my case the Trustee sent a "little" to my student loans after the secured debt was paid 20 months into my Chapter 13. In my case, the Trustee paid some of the accruing interest, so that was nice. If you're not in a Chapter 13 which has true disposable monthly income (DMI) which can go to the unsecured creditors, the student debt may not see any payment.

[Leahnc25]

Justbroke:

Thank you for explaining this to me. I'm just freaking out a bit because I haven't looked at my balance in a while and it's gone up a lot. I will probably just wait until after discharge to request to renew the ibr? I don't want to complicate things. Thank you again.

[NoMoney30]

I am in the same situation. I have over 100k in student loans... only 50% of my loans decided to put a claim in to the bankruptcy - so they are at least sending payments to 1 of my servicers. When I talked to my attorney, he said that I would have to contact the companies and request an IBR during the bankruptcy and because of my bankruptcy taking all my DMI, they would probably set my IBR to 0 for the payment since I have no money to pay them. I haven't bothered to do this yet though and mine are also sitting there accruing interest. Luckily, my interest rates are like 3%, so its not horrible but it is annoying. I do make a lot of money, so I didn't want to get into an IBR situation and then when I'm done with the BK they suddenly want thousands a month.