Daughter learns parents took out $100,000+ in student loans under her name. Help!
Reddit may not always have the answers, but it always has the opinions.
One college student wrote to Reddit asking for advice after finding out what her parents had done. Without consulting with her, or even letting her know, they took out over $100,000 in student loans in her name. Since she had no idea, she wasn't making payments on it. Now, due to the accruing interest, she is over $200,000 in debt.
'Parents took out over $100,000 in student loans in my name.. what are my options?'
I’m in Texas and the loans were taken out in Texas. I have a bachelor’s in a STEM major and an MBA.
Before my first year of undergrad, I took out $2,500 in federal loans. I also took out a federal loan to pay for my graduate school, putting my total federal loans at around $65K.
My parents had told me they took out about $8,000 in private student loans for some of my summer classes. I remember authorizing the $8,000 with the bank.
However, over the course of my last two years of undergrad, they took out over $120,000 in private loans. I am now able to verify that these loan payouts did go towards my education, but I had absolutely no idea these were being taken out.
Under absolutely no circumstances would I have been okay with this, and I would have transferred to a less expensive school had I known this was happening.
I ended up with about $180,000 in loans (pre-interest) that became over $200,000 after capitalization.
They obviously didn’t pay a dime on the interest while I was still in school, and I didn’t know these loans existed and were accruing interest.
My payment is over $2,000 per month and it is crushing me. When federal repayment starts, I literally don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t qualify for income based repayment. I re-financed the private loans, but that didn’t help my payment much.
My question is, was it legal for my parents to take these loans out in my name? My dad is co-signed on the loans, but I am 100% positive I never signed for these loans or received any information about them.
What is my best option here? I don’t even know what type of lawyer I would need for this or if a lawyer would even be able to do anything.
Here were the top rated comments from readers:
You start by going to the loan issuer and getting copies of the documents that I'm willing to bet your signature is on.
The OP responded here:
Would the original issuer have this or whoever is currently servicing the loans? They just got transferred to someone else. I am beyond certain I didn’t sign for these.
Not a lawyer but if you intended to contest them you should not have refinanced. The refinance is basically a new loan with new terms that you have agreed to. I think you are stuck.
You might be SOL unfortunately. The time to fight about it was immediately when you found out. If you made payments or refinanced you essentially verified the debt is legitimate. It’s harder to argue you didn’t have anything to do with this debt while making payments after refinancing.
The OP responded here again:
That’s also what I was wondering, was whether it is now too late to do anything.. thanks for the heads up that it might be.
'My parents had told me they took out about $8,000 in private student loans for some of my summer classes. I remember authorizing the $8,000 with the bank. However, over the course of my last two years of undergrad, they took out over $120,000 in private loans'
This has gone beyond a civil case into criminal ID theft. You would need to contact the authorities, make a police report, etc. Your parents may end up in prison.