Recovery threatened by runaway student loan debt

[happyslug]

31. I have had clients on Social Security Disability, subject to Student loans collections

If my client is on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) then not a problem SSI can NOT be attached to pay such debts, but if the client in on Social Security Disability, then such Social Security can be attached. Most of the problem I have had with Social Security Disability involves child support, not student loans, but the law is the same for both (Except that Students loans are restricted to 25% of income, while Child support is limited to 55% of income, except if you have more then one child then 60%).

Remember this problem started in 1965, but accelerated under Reagan (Prior to Reagan, if you were low income you could get GRANTS, I came out of Collage in 1981 owning just $600 in student loans, which I had to take out to pay one semester). I tried to find employment during Reagan's recession but then went back to School in 1985, but by then I had to take out LOANS to pay for my education.

If you were 18 in 1982 (When loans replaced grants as the main means of paying for College education even for low income families) you were born in 1964, thus in 2012 you are 48 years of age, Social Security has long taken into consideration the aging process and thus makes it easier for people over age 50 to get on Social Security. 1964 is also the traditional last year for the baby boom generation (The baby boom traditionally has been from 1947 till 1964, 1947 show a big jump in birth do to the return home of Soldiers, those soldiers getting married and their wives having babies. 1965 saw a steep drop in births compared to the much slower drop from 1957, the peak year of the baby boom, to 1964, thus the traditional definition is 1947-1964 but marketers have been trying to sub-divide the group even in the 1950s thus various other definitions and divisions).

If you went to graduate school before 1982, you often had to take out loans even then. If you went to College before the mid 1970s you had to take out loans, not grants in that earlier time period (Most loans were taken by women, most men were drafted and thus eligible for the Original GI Bill).

After 1975 the GI Bill was abolished (and has been "Reinstated" at least twice since that date, but no were near what a Veteran received under the Original GI Bill). If you served before 1975 you were eligible for the original GI bill even today, but most veterans did NOT take advantage of it

The problem is the post 1975 era. If you were low Income you received grants till about 1982. If you were NOT low income you had to borrow the money (and if you were female before 1975 you had to borrow the money). A baby boom female (or a male not drafted) born in 1947 entered collage in 1965, had to borrow money to pay for collage, That person would be 65 years old in 2012.

If you were a "non-traditional" student (quite common with the break down of the Steel Industry and its related Coal Industry in the 1980s), many a 40 year old male had to return to College (without the GI Bill) borrow student loan to get a job that paid something close to what they earned in the Steel mills or the Coal Fields. It is now 30 years later and these "Non-Traditional Students of the 1980s" are now in the 70s, many with extensive outstanding student loans.

As you can see, they are many people with students loans who are into their final years of life. When they die, these students loans are still outstanding. Before the recent take over of the Student loans by the Federal Government, these were owned to banks, which sold them to each other. When the ex-student dies, the Federal Government has to pay up. Thus these debts are slowly become the cost of the US Government. Or as one expert has commented "The Chickens of NOT looking into details on how the student is doing in school have come home to roost". The Government has done everything they could to defer this to the next administration, but death of the former student makes it something that MUST be recognized today. With more and more ex-students with outstanding student loans hit their 60s and 70s, more and more of them die. Forcing the Government to recognize that the debt can no longer be paid back.