How Can You Prevent or Stop Student Loan Default Wage Garnishments?
Can student loans garnish your wages? What is a student loan wage garnishment? How can you prevent a garnishment or stop a garnishment that’s already been put into place? This Guide will answer all of those questions in detail, so pay careful attention and you’ll be back on the path to becoming debt free!
Student loan garnishments happen when the lender or debt servicer you owe money to starts subtracting a percentage of what you owe them directly from your paychecks, rather than waiting for you to send them a payment. It’s an automatic process that happens with or without your approval, and which can only be put in place via a court order.
Wage garnishments are referred to as a form of involuntary student loan payments, and officially called “Administrative Wage Garnishments” when talked about in legal contexts, so if you come across that phrasing, just realize that it means the same thing.
Typically, garnishments are only put in place after you have already defaulted on your student loan debt and refused to work out some kind of payment plan with your debt servicer or the collections agency who purchases your debt, so unless you’re having trouble paying back your loans, you’re unlikely to ever experience a garnishment.
This Guide covers everything you need to know about student loan wage garnishments, including all of the rules surrounding them, as well as how to prevent them, or get rid of them after one has been put in place against you.
Quick Links Within This Guide
To make it as easy as possible for you to find the specific content you want, below is a list of all the topic areas I’m going to cover in this Guide. Feel free to click the links to whatever sub-topic you want to learn about.
- What is a Student Loan Wage Garnishment?
- Wage Garnishments on Federal vs. Private Student Loans
- What Causes Wages to Get Garnished Over Student Loan Debt?
- How to Know if You’re Facing the Threat of a Student Loan Wage Garnishment?
- What Are Your Rights Regarding Student Loan Wage Garnishments?
- How Much Money Can Wage Garnishments Take?
- How to Avoid a Student Loan Wage Garnishment
- How To Stop a Student Loan Wage Garnishment
- What are Student Loan Wage Garnishment Hearings?
- What Reasons Can You Use to Request a Wage Garnishment Hearing?
- How to Request a Student Loan Wage Garnishment Hearing
- How to Contact Your Student Loan Collections Agency
- Federal Student Loan Collections Agencies Contact Information
- Avoiding Student Loan Default Scams
- Where Can You Go For Other Student Loan Questions?
Get Help With Your Loans!
If you're truly struggling with student loan debt, then you should consider paying a Student Loan Debt Relief Agency for help. Why? Because the people working at these companies deal with student loans all day, every day, and they're your best chance at figuring out how to get your loans back under control.For help with Federal Student Loans call the Student Loan Relief Helpline at 1-888-906-3065. They will review your case, evaluate your options for switching repayment plans, consolidating your loans, or pursuing forgiveness benefits, then set you up to get rid of the debt as quickly as possible.
For help with Private Student Loans call McCarthy Law PLC at 1-877-317-0455. McCarthy Law will negotiate with your lender to settle your private loans for much less than you currently owe (typically 40%), then get you a new loan for the lower, settled amount so you can pay off the old loan, repair your credit and reduce your monthly payments.
I've spent 10 years interviewing debt relief agencies, talking to all sorts of "experts", and these are the only two companies that I trust to help my readers. If you have a bad experience with either of them, please make sure to come back and let me know about it in the Comments!
Wage Garnishments on Federal Student Loans vs. Private Loans
One quirk to student loan wage garnishments is that this is one of the only times that it’s worse to have Federal loans than Private loans, because Federal Student Loan Servicing Companies can start garnishing your wages much more easily than Private Student Loan Debt Collection Agencies.
Why? Because Federal student loan wage garnishments don’t require a legal judgment against the borrower, as they’re a simple administrative matter that can be initiated with a bit of paperwork.
In contrast, when it comes to private student loan wage garnishments, they can only be initiated if the debt collection agency successfully sues you in court, wins the case against you, and is receives a court order that says they can begin garnishing your wages.
What this means is that it’s much harder for the servicing companies to get a wage garnishment against you if you’ve got private debt.
What Causes Wages to Get Garnished?
Wage garnishments are the inevitable result of Student Loan Delinquencies & Defaults, and do eventually get put in place on both Federal and Private loans when the borrower who defaulted refuses to make things right.
The way they work is that the company you owe the money to starts taking what you should be paying them (but are refusing to do) directly from your paychecks, before you receive any funds yourself.
And what this means is that you end up making far less money and having far less control over your financial life, since you no longer get to decide how much money you want to allocate toward student debt each month.
How do Student Loan Delinquencies and Student Loan Defaults happen? It works differently for Federal and Private loans:
Federal student loans go into Delinquency as soon as you miss a payment, but they don’t enter Default until you’ve missed a payment for 270 days.
Private student loans never go into Delinquency, but instead enter Default as soon as you miss a single payment.
What you should keep in mind is that your best option is to avoid a student loan wage garnishment before it’s initiated by refusing to allow your loans to default, or by utilizing the Student Loan Rehabilitation Program as soon as you find out that your loan has defaulted.
The key concept to keep in mind here is that it’s much easier to prevent a wage garnishment than it is to get rid of one after it’s already been initiated.
How Will You Know If You’re Facing the Threat of Wage Garnishment?
One nice thing about wage garnishments is that they don’t just appear out of thin air, so you can see them coming, and prepare for them before they’ve been put in place.
In fact, student loan servicers and debt collectors are required by law to notify you at least 30 days in advance before any wages begin getting garnished, via a legal letter called a “Notice of Intent to Garnish”, and this is the point in time where you definitely want to take action to stop student loan garnishments from going into place.
My advice for anyone who’s found their way to my site after receiving the Notice of Intent to Garnish is to immediately start looking into your options for getting into the Student Loan Rehabilitation Program, or working on a Consolidation or Loan Modification that gets your loan back out of default status, allowing you to avoid the garnishment going into place.
What Are Your Rights Regarding Wage Garnishments?
Part of the rules regulating wage garnishments on defaulted student loans states that the Notice of Intent to Garnish letter must inform you that you have the right to:
- View your student loan records
- Ask for a hearing regarding the garnishment
- Set up a repayment plan to avoid having your wages garnished
The Notice of Intent to Garnish should also state the reasons that you can request a hearing, and you’ll need to have a legitimate claim in order to get that request approved.
If this information is not included in the Notice of Intent to Garnish letter, then you have a right to ask for a hearing, and you definitely should.
Also, I mentioned this above, but for those of you who missed it, the garnishment must not be put in place any faster than 30 days from the date that the Notice of Intent to Garnish was delivered to you.
Finally, you also have the right not to be fired, be refused employment, or to face disciplinary measures over a student loan wage garnishment, so if your debt collector of even the company that you work for starts making threats about losing your job because of the garnishment, you should make it clear to them that you know that’s completely illegal.
How Much Money Can a Wage Garnishment Take?
Wage garnishments are set differently for Federal and Private loans, and Private loans can basically be set at whatever the court or Judge who issues the judgment against you agrees to, so there’s not much oversight in that realm.
But when it comes to Federal garnishments, officially called Administrative Wage Garnishments, they’re limited to 15% of your disposable income. Fortunately, disposable income is the money you have left after paying for taxes and other mandatory charges, or what most people would refer to as your “take home pay”.
The laws on Federal Student Loan Wage Garnishments state that the government’s servicing agency or debt collector can’t leave you with less than 30 times the Federal Minimum Hourly Wage per week, so for low income earners, they may qualify for wage garnishments substantially lower than 15% of their discretionary income.
The math turns out to being about $7.25 x 30 = $217.50, which means that the wage garnishment slapped on your earnings can’t leave you with less than $217.50 in income per week.
What this means is that minimum wage earners working less than full-time are highly unlikely to face a student loan wage garnishment on their Federal loans, even if they are in default and refusing to pay up.
If you’re worried that your wages are being garnished at a level that’s too high, check out this handy Student Loan Wage Garnishment Calculator to make sure that you’re not losing more than you should be in each check. And if you do find out that someone is garnishing too much money from your checks, be sure to contact your loan servicer to request a hearing.
It’s important to remember that co-signers, including parents who are co-signers on a student loan are also subject to wage garnishments, so if you’re opting to Default on a Student Loan where you do have a co-singer, just be aware that you’re not the only one who the debt servicer or collection agency can come after.
How to Avoid a Student Loan Wage Garnishment?
As soon as you become aware that you’ve got a garnishment on the way, the first thing you should do is contact whoever is trying to put that in place to ask them if you can instead set up a payment plan and prevent it from happening at all.
This is when negotiations will begin, and your servicer will probably ask you for some kind of lump sum payments to show “good faith” (prove that you’re serious about getting back into proper repayment with them), but they’re also going to want you to sign a new contract that says exactly how much you’ll pay them each month.
The key thing to think about here is that you need to prove to them that you’re serious about paying them back, because unless you can convince them that you really will pay them what they want, they’re just going to ignore you and pursue that garnishment instead (since they know that’s guaranteed funds, rather than voluntary payments that you’re promising to provide, but could back out of.)
At this point, your options are probably going to be doing some form of Student Loan Consolidation, which will almost certainly include enrolling in one of the Income-Based Student Loan Repayment Plans, or pursuing a Student Loan Rehabilitation to officially Get Your Loan Out of Delinquency or Default and back into repayment status.
Here’s a short list of things you can do to prevent anyone from garnishing your wages:
- Make your payments on time. This goes without saying. Either sign up for automatic payments (the best bet) or use something like Google Calendar to keep track of due dates, and make sure that your monthly payments are always provided in time. As long as you don’t miss any payments, nobody can garnish your wages.
- Get on an income-driven repayment plan. These offer you the best chance of lowering your monthly payments, especially if you’re a low income earner, or if you’re unemployed. Anyone who isn’t making good money should definitely enroll in one of the Income-Driven Student Loan Repayment Plans
- Deferment or Forbearance. Talk to your loan servicer about these options. Keep in mind though that a forbearance will add the accrued interest to your principal.
How Can You Stop a Student Loan Wage Garnishment?
Remember that it’s a much better idea to do one of the things above and to avoid getting a wage garnishment at all, because getting slapped with that wage garnishment is going to do two things you definitely don’t want:
- First, it’ll ruin your credit score and make it impossible for you to qualify for any of the amazing Federal student loan benefits on offer. You’ll also have trouble getting approved for loans like car loans, mortgages, etc., and you may even have trouble getting a good job or being approved to rent a nice place
- Second, voluntary payments don’t incur any collection costs, penalties, fees or fines, whereas wage garnishments can include penalties as high as 24%! If you want to keep your student loans as cheap as possible, one of the best ways to do that is to make sure that you’re paying them on time, and avoiding the sorts of penalties, fines, and fees that that come with delinquent and defaulted student loans
Now, if all that fails, and you do find out that you’ve got a garnishment on the way, don’t give up yet, because there’s still hope to stop it from going into effect.
Just before the wage garnishment has been put in place, you can attempt to prevent it by requesting a Wage Garnishment Hearing, which I’ll explain in detail below.
Remember, you will definitely want to take care of this before the garnishment starts, because once it’s in place it becomes extremely difficult to get rid of, and it’s going to cost you much more time and money to deal with than if you’d prevented it in the first place.
The most important thing to do is not to wait. As soon as you receive notice that your wages are about to be garnished, make sure that you immediately contact your loan servicer to try and work out a deal that prevents it from happening. Showing them that you’re genuinely interested in paying back the money will make your life much easier.
What Are Student Loan Wage Garnishment Hearings?
Student Loan Wage Garnishment Hearings allow you to put your impending wage garnishment on hold if you request a hearing within 15 or 30 days of having received the Notice of Intent to Garnish (depending on the type of Federal Student Loan you’ve defaulted on).
Check your Notice of Intent for details, because whoever is attempting to garnish your wages is legally required to list the number of days you have to request a hearing within the copy of that letter.
What’s the purpose of a wage garnishment hearing? They let you fight the garnishment and attempt to get it removed before anyone is able to start taking money out of your paychecks.
How are wage garnishment hearings conducted? Most of them happen over the phone, rather than in a court of law, because they go pretty quickly, and are relatively straight-forward legal processes.
If you would prefer to have an in-person hearing, they are available for Defaulted Federal Loans, but only in San Francisco, Chicago or Atlanta, and all your travel expenses and other costs will have to be paid for by you, even if you win the hearing.
Even if you think you’re going to lose the hearing though, it can be an effective way to slightly delay the initiation of wage garnishments, since it can take up to 60 days after your hearing to find out whether or not your request to rescind the garnishment has been approved.
What Reasons Can You Use To Request a Wage Garnishment Hearing?
Earlier in this post, I mentioned that you can’t request a hearing for no reason, as there are specific legal instructions around when a hearing should be held
If you do decide to request a hearing for a coming wage garnishment, I highly recommend that you use one of the following claims as your reasons for asking to have that hearing:
- You’re experiencing financial hardship. You’ll need to provide plenty of proof in order to get a hearing on these grounds, but if you can do that, and if you win at the eventual hearing, then your wage garnishments are likely to be lowered or even cancelled altogether. However, the issue will probably be revisited every 6 months or so to see if your financial circumstances have changed, so don’t think of a student loan garnishment hardship as being a magic solution to your default.
- You’ve recently filed for bankruptcy. Again, you’ll need to provide proof that you’ve filed for bankruptcy, and you’ll have to provide all the details explaining your bankruptcy, but this is a good way to prevent a garnishment from going into place (at least temporarily), as most courts won’t allow lenders to start garnishing wages until after your bankruptcy case has been settled.
- You were fired from your last job. If you’ve been at your current job for less than a year, and you can prove that your last job fired you, then you can request a wage garnishment hearing at which you’ll explain that you have only fallen behind on your student loan payments because of this change in circumstances (if you’re making more money than you were previously, then this won’t work…).
- You’re already enrolled in a repayment plan. Obviously, if you’re already enrolled in a repayment plan, and you’re following the plan by making regular monthly payments, then there isn’t any need for the lender to extract an involuntary payment from you. Sometimes there can be a mix-up, or a lender or servicing company will get greedy and try to sneak a few of these through, but if you’ve been keeping up with your payments then you definitely shouldn’t be hit with a wage garnishment, and you’ll absolutely want to request a hearing to get rid of the wage garnishment before it goes into place.
- You no longer owe the money. Perhaps you’ve already paid off the student loan already, and it’s only by accident that you’ve been alerted that a wage garnishment is coming. Alternatively, maybe you’re eligible for Federal Student Loan Forgiveness, or for a Discharge, like via the Borrower’s Defense to Repayment Program, or the Closed School Loan Discharge Program, and you’re fighting against paying the loan because you’ve already qualified for those benefits, but your servicer is dragging their feet or preventing you in some way from getting the discharge that you deserve.
How To Request a Wage Garnishment Hearing
To request a wage garnishment hearing, you have to apply for it officially by contacting your loan servicer and asking for one in writing.
This is a little unintuitive, because it’s your loan servicer or collection agency who’s trying to get the wage garnishment against you, but if you want to prevent it from going into effect, you’ll have to tell them that you want a hearing to review it’s legality as soon as you’re informed that they’re attempting to put it into place.
If you don’t know who services your loans, the easiest way to sort that out is to look at who you’re sending your monthly payments to. Whoever processes those payments is your loan servicer.
For Federal student loan debt, you can use the Federal Student Aid Website to find out who services your debt. For Private student loan debt, you’ll need to pay attention to wherever those checks are being sent, because they’re the people servicing your loans.
How To Contact Your Student Loan Collections Agency
If you need to contact your collection agency for any reason, then you’ll want to refer to the table below to find their contact information.
If you don’t know who your collection agency is, and you can’t figure that out by looking at mail notices or any other forms of communication you’ve received from them, then you can contact the Department of Education’s Default Resolution Group by sending them a letter to:
- U.S. Department of Education
- P.O. Box 5609
- Greenville, TX 75403-5609
- 1-800-621-3115
- 1-877-825-9923 TTY
And before you start looking through the table, please note that this only includes the Federal Student Loan Collection Agencies, or the agencies that the Department of Education has official contracts with.
If you’ve got private student loans that are being collected against, then you may have a collection agency who isn’t listed here, and you’ll need to look elsewhere for assistance.
Federal Student Loan Collections Agencies Contact Information
Here’s the list of all the official student loan collection agencies approved to collect on defaulted Federal student loan debt.
If you’ve got a Federal loan, and some other agency is telling you that you need to send them money, I would highly advise that you refuse, and instead perform some research to find out if they’re a new collection agency who was recently approved by the Department of Education.
If you can’t find any official reference that says these guys are legitimate, then be careful about sending them any information or money, because there’s a pretty good chance they could be some kind of Student Loan Scammer who you will want to avoid entirely.
| Account Control Technology, Inc. P.O. Box 11750 Bakersfield, CA 93389-1750 1-866-887-2800 | Action Financial Services P.O. Box 3250 Central Point, OR 97502 1-888-253-4239 |
| Alltran Education P.O. Box 9088 Woodridge, IL 60517 1-888-377-5000 | Bass & Associates P.O. Box 66080 Tucson, AZ 85728-5478 1-855-533-1107 |
| Central Research P.O. Box 1460 Lowell, AR 72745-1460 1-844-804-8467 | Coast Professional Inc. P.O. Box 2899 West Monroe, LA 71294 1-800-964-0881 |
| ConServe P.O. Box 457 Fairport, NY 14450-0457 1-866-633-7945 | Credit Adjustments Inc. P.O. Box 5640 Manchester, NH 03108 1-800-347-9623 |
| FH Cann & Associates P.O. Box 877 North Andover, MA 01845 1-877-677-9126 | FMS Investment Corp. P.O. Box 1423 Elk Grove Village, IL 60009-1423 1-877-291-8405 |
| GC Services P.O. Box 27346 Knoxville, TN 37927 1-877-244-7901 | Immediate Credit Recovery Inc. P.O. Box 965156 Marietta, GA 30066 1-866-401-7190 |
| National Credit Services P.O. Box 766 Bothell, WA 98041-0766 1-800-445-9346 | National Recoveries, Inc. P.O. Box 120666 St. Paul, MN 55112 1-877-221-9729 |
| Performant Financial Corporation 333 North Canyons Pkwy, Suite 100 Livermore, CA 94551 1-866-256-0057 | Pioneer Credit Recovery, Inc. P.O. Box 228 Arcade, NY 14009 1-888-287-0317 |
| Professional Bureau of Collections of Maryland P.O. Box 3725 Englewood, CO 80155 1-844-225-5501 | Reliant Capital Solutions P.O. Box 307290 Gahanna, OH 43230 1-877-404-8853 |
| Transworld Systems, Inc. 507 Prudential Road Horsham, PA 19044 215-441-3000 | Windham Professionals, Inc. P.O. Box 400 East Aurora, NY 14052 1-877-719-4440 |
Avoiding Student Loan Default Scams
Remember, there are all sorts of scammers out there trying to take advantage of people like you who are experiencing student loan debt problems, and who aren’t entirely sure what you need to do about them.
Most of the time, these groups are going to tell you that they’re experts, or they’re the best at debt resolution or debt negotiations, and that if you pay them for their assistance, they’ll be able to get you a better deal than you could yourself.
This may or may not be true, because it depends entirely on the how good they are at what they do, and the quality of these types of organizations varies WILDLY. Some of them are great, while others won’t actually do anything other than collecting money from you and making excuses for why they haven’t fixed your default yet.
If you do decide to pay someone for help, please listen to me when I say that the only company you should trust is the Student Loan Relief Helpline or McCarthy Law, as they’re the only experts who I trust to actually help my readers!
Where Can I Go For Other Questions?
For any questions that I didn’t answer in the post above, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below and I’ll try to get you a response within 24 hours.
Alternatively, if you need an answer right now, then be sure to check out some of the other pages of my site where I go through other student loan topics in detail, including offering very specific advice for all sorts of different situations for both Federal and Private student loans.
To get Help with Federal Student Loan Debt look at my pages on Federal Loan Forgiveness, the Borrower’s Defense To Repayment Discharge Program, the Closed School Loan Discharge Program, Federal Student Loan Bankruptcy Discharges, Federal Student Loan Consolidation Programs, and Federal Student Loan Delinquency Help, and Federal Student Loan Default Rehabilitation.
For those of you who need Help with Private Student Loan Debt, you’ll want to head to the pages on my site covering Private Student Loan Forgiveness Programs, Private Student Loan Consolidation Options, Private Student Loan Bankruptcy Discharges and Private Student Loan Default Help.
You should be able to find all sorts of help from the pages linked above, but if you still need assistance, please post your questions in the comments section below.
Please do not email me or attempt to contact me on Facebook, because I won’t respond there, but I do read my comments and am happy to provide advice via the comments, so don’t be afraid to ask for help!
Disclaimer:Information obtained from Forget Student Loan Debt is for educational purposes only. You should consult a licensed financial professional before making any financial decisions. This site receives some compensation through affiliate relationships. This site is not endorsed or affiliated with the U.S. Department of Education.
By: Tim Marshall
Tim's experience struggling with crushing student loan debt led him to create the website Forget Student Loan Debt in 2011, where he offers advice, tips and tricks for paying off student loans as quickly and affordably as possible.
Hello,
I attended Everest Institute in 2010 and while I did graduate with my LPN license, I KNOW that I was the subjected to fraud and misrepresentation by their finance department and their job placement dept. I was told that the total cost of the program was in the mid 20k range and by the time I graduated it had skyrocketed to the mid 30s. Also, my original grad date was prolonged due to their clerical ERROR and I attempted to appeal and they denied me. So, they were racking up fees because I still had to attend classes and couldn’t go to clinical for 3 mos because of their ERROR.
Now I’ve been in and out of default because of the multiple lending companies they’ve used, and I’ve even paid 10 consecutive payments to some company that promised to have my loan forgiven if I completed them only to be bamboozled at the end, and they did not fulfill their promise.
Currently, US DEPT of ED, has taken 2 of my federal income taxes due to the default even though I checked ALL year to ensure that I wasn’t in default and made sure that I entered into a forebearance or deferred status prior to filing my taxes and was told that I wasn’t in default. I didn’t get any paperwork or forewarning that my taxes were going to be offset. Also, there is no record of the offset amount deducted from my balance. It’s like it never happened. $7000+ dollars and no deductions.
Please advise
You may need to hire an attorney.
This might have been answered at some point, but here goes. I have recently separated and had to move states. I had a wage garnishment while with my ex husband and I was fine with it because I had him to help me financially. I am now on my own, having difficulty getting approved for an apt and having almost $500 taken out of my check monthly. What can I do to either take the garnishment off or make the money taken out a less? Please help1
Just found the collection agency it is with as well.
Hi Jessica,
So, did you read my full article?
Help! I have recently had a wage garnishment for my student loans, They are taking 15% of my gross income. I have child support and insurance also coming out weekly. So since the garnishment started my check each week is practicly nothing. They take out more than I bring home. I have recently talked to the US Department of Education and the collection agency that is garnishing my check and they told me to file for a hardship. So I did and I had to send them documents of all my bills so I could have a hearing or whatever so they would stop garnishing my check. I can’t even pay half of my bills or buy groceries for that matter. I’m gonna get evicted and lose my car if something doesn’t happen. So anyway I sent all the stuff to the Department of Education not the collection agency. So I am continuing to get letters from the collection agency wanting payment. I called and talked to them again and let them know I had already talked to the Department of Education and sent the necessary documents to them. They couldn’t tell me anything at that point but continue to send these letters. It has been at least a month since I sent all that and I have not gotten any kind of response, Meanwhile I am not bringing home as much as is being taken out of my check weekly. If you could give me some advice on what I need to do I would be so grateful. I am afraid I am going to lose my home and my car if something doesn’t happen soon. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Hi Jennifer,
Garnishments are difficult to get rid of… but contact your loan servicer to see if you qualify for the Student Loan Rehabilitation Program.
I’m in a bit of a pickle. I received TEACH Grants while attending college with the agreement that I would teach in a low income school for four years within eight years of completing my teaching program. I completed my program in 2015 and started teaching immediately. I received a notification that I needed to certify my teaching, which I did. Long story short, they kept rejecting my forms and converted my grants to loans. Apparently, I’m not the only one. NPR did a pretty extensive piece on the problem.
Short story longer, I received a notice indicating that these loans were being sent to garnishment. At the same time, I received a notice that my loans qualified for a review to have them converted back to grants. I submitted the forms to fight the garnishment and also pursued having my loans reconverted back to grants.
My request to stop the garnishment was denied, but my request to have my loans reconverted was accepted. I received that notice April 24th so I thought I was in the clear. Then May 13, I received a notice from my employer that my wages are going to be garnished as of June 1st. I’ve called the collection agency and they said that they need to receive the order from the Default Resolution Dept. I called the Default Resolution Dept. I called The Default Resolution Dept. And they said that they need to be recalled from Fedloan. I’ve been round and round. I contacted the FSA Ombudsmen group, and still nothing. I’m at a total loss at this point. Any advice?
This is ridiculous. What did the Ombudsman Group say? Try calling them again. Try calling the Department of Education directly. Then try calling your Servicing Company again. You’re going to have to keep pushing on everyone to get this resolved. I’d call 3-5 times per day, raise all sorts of hell, and ask for Managers of Managers, trying to force them to get this taken care of, because you certainly don’t deserve to be given the runaround like this. You may even need to consider hiring an attorney to defend you.
I tried the rehabilitation program offered by agency handling my fed student loan and after 10 payments they forgave some penalties and interest but said I would still end up paying 5x as much over next decades. I considered suicide. I borrowed $60k and will end up paying $310k. So now an unannounced garnishment kicked in for over $700 a month. Now that they have garnishment in effect with ADP anywhere I work the remainder of my career they will have hooks in me. My question: since they are automatically getting into my pay regularly will my loan status stay as “defaulted” for the rest of my days? How is that possible?
Thanks for tips I have M.S. degree but I’m scrod over final cost
Hi,
Yeah, your loan remains in Default until you can get it back into Repayment Status. If you complete the Federal Student Loan Rehabilitation Program, then your loan will go back into Repayment, Default will end, and your credit score will approve.
Don’t give up! There’s a lot of hope on the near horizon for major reforms in student debt. If Bernie or Elizabeth Warren take the Presidency (or any Democrat really…), things will get significantly better. It is just a waiting game at this point.
I have Federal student loan debt they have been taking my tax return for several years yet my balance doesn’t reflect that and I don’t understand why, can I file bankruptcy to get out from under this debt
Hi Laurie,
Probably because the amount they’re taking doesn’t cover your interest accumulation. If you’ve fallen behind and in Student Loan Delinquency or Default, then your loan is probably ballooning in size each month you miss payments and debt accumulates.
Look at my Guide to the Federal Student Loan Rehabilitation Program. It may be your only option for getting the loan back on track.
Hello,
My wages have just begun to be garnished and I never received the notice in the mail. I tried to track it down and the had the wrong address on file which is why I never saw the notice. Is there anything I can do at this point to stop the garnishments? I tried calling the Department of Ed they told me to call the loan service they contracted out. I called them and they told me there was nothing they could do and that I have to go through the Department of Education again. They are garnishing the max 15% and I don’t know how many months I can go with not having that income any longer. Department of Education said they were sending me some document that I have to fill out completely and get back to them. I am assuming it may be a hardship document? I just feel like no one cares and I just have no idea who to talk to in order to get this all figured out. I want to enter into a reasonable monthly payment option, but I need the wage garnishments to stop. Thanks in advance for all your help.
-Tyler
Hi Tyler,
Yeah, it’s probably a hardship document that they’re sending. And no, these people don’t care. They talk to hundreds of people like you on a daily basis, so when it comes down to it, you’re just another number in a nameless, faceless system to them.
You’ll need to get the documents and see what they’re offering before you can determine next steps. It might be easy, but it might be really difficult too.
These are Federal loans though, right? If they were Private I’d suggest calling McCarthy Law, who can help get loans back on track after they’ve defaulted, whether or not they’re being garnished.
Yes, these are federal loans.
Ok, you’ll just have to find a way to get those documents and see what the next step looks like. It could be options for using the Federal Student Loan Rehabilitation Program, or it might just be some kind of vague legal threats. Good luck!
I am a victim of fraud and student loans were taken out in my name. I have been fighting this since 2010 with no luck. I did all i was supposed to do, file police report, file ftc complaint, dispute credit bureaus, put alert on my reports, and fought with the school. 2009 taxes were offset and I never got it back. they tried offsetting my taxes again in 2012 and i fought us department of education and my taxes were finally returned to me a few months later. now this year, 2019, my taxes were kept again. US Department of Education told me only way to get these student loans removed from my name is to get a conviction of person who stole my identity and took the loans out. I DONT KNOW WHO STOLE MY IDENTITY!!!! if I did they would be in jail already. But I dont know who stole my information. I just found out today that this school, AIU, was sued by a class action lawsuit for opening fraudulent loans and many other things. i am at my wits end as i dont know what else to do. this has truly ruined my life, chances of purchasing a home for my family, denials on credit cards and cars, and them keeping my income tax returns that my family relies on. The US Department of Education has kept close to $12,000 of my income tax returns for something that is not mine. Everyone who has given me numbers to call for this situation results in a dead end and back to the US Department of Education who refuses to help me.
Hi Jessica,
Try calling the Student Loan Ombudsman Group to see if they can help. This is a Government-backed group of attorneys who offer advice on student loan-related legal issues. They MIGHT be able to help you…
Granddaughter has 30,000. in gov. student loans which she ignored for the last year or so.,,,her fault entirely. Gov. sent loans to collection agency that wants more per month than she can afford to pay. If that amount stands she’ll have to quit her job, give up her apt. and move in with family in another state. How does one reason with these vultures who make unreasonable demands? Is there an agency that will help her to deal with this or one that will take over the loans and assess realistic payments?
It’s tough to fix things if the loan has already gone into default and been sold to a collection agency, but have a look at my Guides to Federal Student Loan Default and the Federal Student Loan Rehabilitation Program. You MIGHT still have a chance at getting the loans back into repayment status and back on track. That’s going to be the best option here.
Tim, the situation Shely has going is similar to my husband’s.and your advice is very helpful. You mentioned she contact the collection agency. How can we find out what agency is doing the actual garnishment so we can try to negotiate? We cannot locate a letter that notified him of the impending garnishment, Thank you.
That’s crazy that they’re garnishing without even notifying you guys. Did you change addresses or something? There’s got to be a way to sort out who is taking the funds. I think that Employers have to be contacted before garnishments an go into place, so I’d start by asking his employer.
I think I may need to hire someone. I thought all my loans were with Navient. I’ve been working on my credit so I check it every month. Last week I get a call from my employer telling me I am to be garnished next paycheck… I said “from whom?” The Dept of Ed… I asked her if I could see who exactly is garnishing me because I am not aware of any other loans… I consolidated years ago. So she received the garnish letter and informed me 3/15. I started with all the correct steps all the way to the ombudsman… and everyone was telling me fed loans was my servicer. Turns out that was incorrect. It was the Dept of education debt collection who passed of to coast professional who told me that only the servicer could suspend or hold the garnishment till my hearing. We filled out the IBR consolidation, and are now about to fill out a hearing so we can go threw with the consolidation. I have been reported in the past up to 8 times for the same loan with different collectors in the past… that’s when I paid someone to help me sort it all out and consolidate. All was running smoothly until last Thursday and I just today received my alert that my credit score had dropped 100 points this month. Turns out the collection agency reported 3/3 sent the garnishment letter and I was given no chance to resolve on my own. My employer is working with me… the Dept of Ed debt reconciliation placed a complaint against the collection agency… but no one will suspend the garnishment. And now how am I going to repair my credit… had I known I had these other loans which look consolidated I would have been able to make sure they weren’t with navient as well as if I owed them consolidate. Now am I really left with just no recourse or any words of wisdom for writing for my hearing?
This is one of the biggest problems with student loan debt – people literally can’t even figure out who they’re supposed to be paying, because the paper trail gets so convoluted.
I think that the servicing companies and then debt collectors do this on purpose to make it as hard as possible to deal with the debt. You’re lucky that your employer is attempting to help because that at least reduces some of the stress, but still – what a pain.
Honestly I don’t really have any advice on what you’ll be able to do here because you’re pretty much beyond my realm of expertise at this point and into the realm of legal/financial advice, rather than student loan planning, but I would definitely suggest trying to bring as much EVIDENCE as you can to that hearing, or hiring an attorney to handle that part of the process for you!
Hi, Tim. My situation is a little bit different, and I’m not sure what to do. I got a notice of garnishment a year ago but received a discharge for total and permanent disability, which wiped out my loans. At that point, I had gotten one month of my SSI garnished, which was refunded by the collection agency. This month I was surprised to see that my SSI deposit was short $200, and was total by the Social Security office that it was garnished by the Department of Education. I called the collection agency that the automated system told me had my loan. The person I talked to said that she saw in their system that they gave me the refund last year and that the loan was discharged. When I asked her how they could be garnishing a loan that was discharged she told me she didn’t know. I didn’t get any notification of this garnishment. I can’t get through to the Department of Education, but I’m not even sure if that’s who I need to talk to. I thought the point of getting a discharge for TPD was to avoid garnishments? (not to mention that I can’t afford to pay the loan back due to being on SSI). Any advice for me? Thanks so much!
Yeah, this doesn’t sound right.
You should contact the Student Loan Ombudsman Group to ask them to help you. This is a Federal Government-backed group of Attorneys who provide free legal assistance to people struggling with student loan-related issues. They will definitely be able to help you!
Great article. Very comprehensive. I got a wage garnishment 30 day notice in the mail and i have been negotiating with the loan holder for repayments. I am recently married and they want to include my wife income into their calculations. I do not feel this correct since we file married but separately. I unfortunately cannot find anything that confirms or denies what they claim. Do you have insight into this?
Hi Caleb,
Thanks for the kind words! I am not sure, legally speaking, how this will play out, but I think that you should be able to exclude your wife from the calculations as long as you file separately. I would speak with an attorney though, because that may not be the case, and it could obviously make a huge impact on the amount of your garnishment.
I tried to ask for false certification because I was falsley certified with no high school diploma. Was dropped from class during first two months . Department of education says they cant find any info on my enrollment but still sticking me with loan!!! I cant find anywhere to go for help besides right back to thier website!
Hi Cynthia,
This isn’t the sort of thing that they’ll discharge a loan for. You need to come up with a much more compelling argument. False Certification is something like the school lying about the their own certification, for example, saying they were accredited by some group who never said that they actually were.
Hi- I want to consolidate my defaulted loans but my wages are already being garnished, I cannot afford the garnishment and I certainly can’t afford to lose my tax return but it doesn’t seem like there is anything I can do to stop this! They are already taking over $600 a month in garnishments so I can’t afford to make additional payments to have the garnishment lifted, What are my options for lifting the garnishment? The few times I have dealt with the collections agency in the past, they were not helpful so I can’t see them being willing to lift the garnishment so I can consolidate even though the defaulted loan would then be paid off.
Please Help! I need to stop the garnishment and get out of default ASAP!!
Hi Shely,
Did you read the entire post? There are all sorts of strategies suggested here for trying to get rid of the garnishment.
I think your best bet is going to be negotiating a new repayment plan with the collections agency. Even if they haven’t been helpful in the past, if you can find a way to offer them a lump-sum, and a new structure for payments, then you may be able to make it work.
Here’s the thing though – right now, they probably feel like they’ve got a good thing going, because they’re getting that $600 a month no matter what. Even if you hit hard times, don’t feel like you can afford it and don’t want to pay it, you’re still paying them the full amount.
You’re going to need to convince them that whatever deal you offer is better for them, financially. Which means you may end up having to offer a pretty big lump sum payment up front, but then smaller monthly payments down the line.
Talk to them about your plan to consolidate and get back out of default, and see what their thoughts are on that. It’s really going to be your best bet for ending the garnishment.
Wish I had a magic bullet option for you, but student loan garnishments are not easy things to get rid of!