http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/13/bankrupt-dad-battles-get-student-loan-debt-forgiven/cYGo9MeCZ5hj1oPdCqezbO/story.html
Dad borrowed nearly a quarter of a million dollars in parent loans to put his three kids through college.
Dad lost high paying executive job 14 years ago and has not been able to find work since.
This dad lost his executive job 14 years ago and has not worked since?
“He testified that he launched an exhaustive job search and blamed his inability to find work on his advanced age, a failing economy, and the loss of manufacturing jobs.”
Was working at a call center or Target beneath him?
His now adult children took out their own loans and cannot help the parents pay off their loans. This was likely 20 years ago when college tuition was relatively cheaper!
Bad choices all around.
Reading this, I wonder: why would the parents turn down income-based repayment? The father believes the debt will grow - ignoring the fact that IBR plans are designed to keep payments manageable, and his family would be paying $0. He also cites a $10,000 tax penalty if the debt is discharged as a result of IBR. The debt owed by this couple, lest they forget, is nearing a quarter of a million dollars.
The financial literacy that tells you $247,000 > $10,000 is taught in first grade, but that’s none of my business.
But the kids went to their dream schools.
Wait a minute–he lost his job in 2002, but the loans were taken out between 2001 and 2007, so most of them after he lost his job. So he had no way to pay them back when he was taking them out. That sounds like a plan for disaster.
Not clear if these were federal Parent Plus loans or private loans. If private loans they are not eligible for IBR.
$240,000/3 kids is over $80,000 per kid. Add in the kids own loans, say Stafford max, that means that there was over $100,000 in loans per kid! Ridiculous but some here on CC would think it worthwhile.
Right…private loans are not eligible for IBR. At all.
But if the father was not employed, perhaps,the mother was. All you have to do is breathe to qualify for a Parent Plus Loan. But a private loan would require you to be qualified…which usually means you have to have an income.
What is the mother’s story?
It said they were Plus loans that could be converted and if converted would be eligible for IBR. He doesn’t want the possibility that he’d have to pay taxes on the forgiven amount in 15-20years. If he is so old and feeble that he can’t possibly get a job in the next 15 years, isn’t it possible he might DIE and thus stiff the taxpayers that way?
I might have a little sympathy if he’d taken the loans just for the year he lost his job, maybe for 2 years thinking he would just need a bridge until he got a new job. I have no sympathy that he took loans for 3 kids, for 7-8 years, and only for a few years did one of his kids go to a public (although OOS) school. He and his family did nothing to try to keep the costs down.
Should we forgive Martin o"malley’s $350k in parent plus loans because he is no longer employed as the governor of Maryland, and won’t be president either?
Call me brutal, cold-hearted,… or whatever. But I have absolutely NO sympathy for this man.
Dream school? Bridgewater State?
Maybe the kid transferred there from UConn after the debt got too high…or maybe a graduate degree?
Besides the fact that this father was an idiot, why this case is significant:
This Court Case Could Unshackle Americans From Student Debt
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-08/this-court-case-could-unshackle-americans-from-student-debt
And it would fundamentally change the ability of parents to get student loans for their kids.
@NotVerySmart …“ignoring the fact that IBR plans are designed to keep payments manageable, and his family would be paying $0. He also cites a $10,000 tax penalty if the debt is discharged as a result of IBR. The debt owed by this couple, lest they forget, is nearing a quarter of a million dollars.”
I think you’ve just explained why no one will hire him to manage a company. Meanwhile he’s racking up legal fees.
I believe he was representing himself at first and now has an appointed counsel.
I think @garland hit on a key point. He was taking loans when he had no job. Is it fraud to knowingly take loans when you know you can’t pay them back? I know if I were not employed I would Certainly NOT be taking loans.
In 14 years of unemployment he applied for one “menial” job and they never contacted him!
Call centers are desperate for warm bodies. If you can pass a criminal background check and in some cases a drug screening you are hired. If you do well you can fairly quickly be promoted to supervisor. You earn a decent salary with benefits.
This guy is basically a welfare cheat.
@“Erin’s Dad” ’ I believe he was representing himself at first and now has an appointed counsel."
I thought only criminal defendants were entitled to appointed (taxpayer paid) counsel. Can anyone verify? Maybe someone is handling this pro bono because if he wins they will might get paying scofflaws. I mean clients.
No sympathy here. Fourteen years and no job…give me a break. Also, plenty of families will never earn what that man was earning, and manage to put their kids through school with little to no debt (we’re doing it with 4 kids). It’s called saving, planning, and personal responsibility. And this guy has an MBA?! but couldn’t manage the finances for a family of five…amazing.
Plus 1 to what WhataP said in #17. I respect people that work, save and sacrifice. There are lots of folks that didn’t get that memo.
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Robert E. Murphy lost his job nearly 14 years ago and says he hasn’t been able to find a new one. Now 65, he has already depleted his retirement savings, which has left him and his wife largely dependent on her $13,200 yearly salary as a teacher’s aide. And a bank is trying to foreclose on their Duxbury home.
Based on these facts, Murphy might seem a sympathetic petitioner for relief from the more than $246,000 he still owes on student loans he borrowed to send his three children to college. But a federal bankruptcy judge denied Murphy’s request, ruling that he has not proven that paying the debt would present an undue hardship.
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he was 51 years old when he lost his job… While that isn’t young, it’s not so “advanced in age” that he couldn’t have found something.
And since he was unemployed during most of the borrowing, why didn’t the younger ones apply to schools that give better need based aid?