that's because knowledge is what was bought with the loan and you own it for the rest of your life as it can't be repossessed...
Posted on 10/27/2012 6:50:47 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Cyndee Marcoux already was stretched thin, thanks to the $80,000 in student loans she racked up after getting divorced and going back to school a decade ago. Her breaking point came in 2010, when her daughter defaulted on student-loan payments of her own.
That's because Ms. Marcoux, a 53-year-old library administrator in Seekonk, Mass., co-signed for about $55,000 of her daughter's loans. When the daughter was unable to keep making payments, Ms. Marcoux was on the hook—a burden that forced her to reshuffle her entire life. To scrape up the extra $550 a month she owed, she sold her house, then took a second job registering emergency-room patients on the weekend overnight shift. "You work your whole life and never pay a bill late," says Ms. Marcoux. "You don't ever think your kid isn't going to pay."
After years of facing all sorts of financial pressures they never expected, from adult kids moving back home to their own parents needing help to retire, empty nest parents are struggling with a new headache. Thinking it was only natural to want to help children and grandchildren, many co-signed student loans. Now, they're becoming the latest victims of the nation's mounting problem with student-loan debt, which surpassed the $1 trillion mark last year.
At a growing rate, young graduates who are either out of work or who didn't land high-paying jobs find themselves unable to pay their loans. When primary borrowers stop paying, co-signers are expected to pick up the tab—and soon find themselves fending off debt collectors. "People are confused about what it means to co-sign, and their ongoing obligation," says Deanne Loonin, director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center, a consumer-advocacy group in Boston. "When they come to understand that they are equally liable,
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Universities are their preaching platforms. Why should they endanger those. Why should they demand changes — to make schools of higher education operate more like businesses — that would disgruntle university liberals?
that's because knowledge is what was bought with the loan and you own it for the rest of your life as it can't be repossessed...
What sort of rot is this? The parents aren't that stupid, they simply hope creditors will chase the borrower, their kid, instead of them. If the parents believed they had no obligation to repay the kid's loan why do they think they were called on to cosign?
$55,000 student loan? That's nuts! and cosigning for it more so. Tell the kid to find a job and save a few bucks and promise to match their savings so they can go to a community college. It won't cost $55,000.
And what sort of idiot child would play so fast and loose with their parents lives?
I'll try to feel bad, I really will.
One that’s bought a bill of goods maybe.
Oh, an out of state and/or private school will be tickled to charge that much for the fancy matriculation. Why this Super Librarian got a degree at Harvard! Or Yale! Too bad he or she only has a job administrating the library at Podunkville in Flyoverstate.
Why is Uncle Sam in this business.
Of course, a generation or two ago people could afford to pay for college out of pocket (as well as their medical bills). When I went to college 20+ years ago, an entire four years of tuition and books at a reputable state university cost less than a new car did at the time. Today, the cost is comparable to a home. It has gotten out of hand.
Not so HiTech try this link: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC4QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10000872396390444024204578044622648516106.html&ei=wKiMULybOKqo0AGbzoD4Bw&usg=AFQjCNHB6Wld1zPXKdeVqyokThXBz0tAlA
Well, that’s what “co-sign” means.
I co-signed for one son’s loans, but I did it with both eyes open, realizing I’d have to pay them if he did not.
If they don’t deserve it, why should they be condemned if they find a way to wriggle out?
“Student loans NEVER, EVER go away. They can not be discharged in bankruptcy. The US government will hound you until the day you die to collect - to even taking money from your social security checks.”
I have read that quite a number of college grads have left the country to escape student loan debt. Apparently, it’s very difficult to collect debts overseas.
There are consumer laws and court decisions about fraud and duress and true meeting of the minds in a contract, if you were not aware of it. This sounds in some respects like it was operated very much like a scam.
I am well aware of it and know that a well written contract is very hard to break. As for duress that will probably not apply to the incessant whining of a child trying to get into a school they cannot afford. Duress is when the grantor does something to coerce the guaranteeor (person signing)into signing. What is it the bank is doing to coerce these undeserving people? What scam makes people sign a paper of their own free will guaranteeing a loan?
Explain why someone who co-signs for a loan does not “deserve” to repay it? Please explain how you become deserving of not repaying something you agreed to? IF there is room in the contract to wiggle out then fine wiggle out and be glad the contract was weak. I doubt that many loan agreements are weakly written documents.
Setting up strawmen and begging the question will not prevail when this becomes a genuine political stink. It’s not “banks” that were ever in the position to be holding the bag here. It is the government, and that is an eminently politically malleable entity. A bankruptcy proof loan is a very rare bird today outside of this student loan business, and it is unlikely to be considered conscionable for much longer because the scope has become so great.
Lecturing on the inevitability of discharging student loans in bankruptcy is a nice diversion fromm your initial comments that some people dont “deserve” having to pay off co-signed loans while other do “deserve” to pay them off because of poor planning.
I have asked you to explain how it is that some people do not “deserve” to have to pay these loans. So far you have not other than to point to “duress” or a “meeting of the minds”.
Anyone who signs a loan document “deserves” to repay it per the terms of the agreement that they signed. Exceptions would be for fraud or duress but I sincerely doubt that the banks have been forcing people to sign or somehow engaged on trickery.
Ultimately government will be asked to mediate that very question, and the fact that such signatures were made so easy to get will doubtless weigh heavily in the debate. Count it unsurprising if bankruptcy is ultimately allowed to intervene in these government owned loans.
The same thing, by the way, could have been said during the debates about the debtors prisons that were repudiated in the early 20th century. Why did these people not deserve to go to prison any more? The same thing will be asked about what is in essence a perpetual fine.
Mores change. Congresses who agreed to this kind of loan structure and agreed to put the confiscatory muscle of the government behind it, should have foreseen it was not going to bear the light of day.
Because THE LEFT DESIGNED THE SYSTEM. It is merely another clever income transfer trap.
I have two children in college. The financial applications have to go through the Federal govt. now, and the govt informs the family what they must pay in addition to the kids getting their own maximum loans.
The cute thing is, if the students' parents never married or are divorced, only ONE parent's income is reported. If the student is unmarried and has a child, NO parental income needs to be reported. And of course, welfare-for-life and disability moochers don't have to show income.
So the middle-class working families with married parents get SLAUGHTERED when the "family financial contribution" is calculated. The family doesn't sign to pay it, then the student can't go, as simple as that.
Then you have the joy of racking up 10-20 thousand a year debt for your child to be sitting next to someone in class whose family pays NOTHING because they never got married, or grew up in a welfare-as-a-career household or the student is a teen mother.
Massive money from conservative working families goes to pay for the college educations of OBAMA's base...it's all about "paying your fair share" now.
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