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STUDENT LOAN CHALLENGES
Wage or Retirement Garnishment; IRS or State Tax Refund Offset; Disability Benefit Offset
We have extensive experience challenging federally guaranteed student loans in administrative hearings and in U.S. federal district court.
You have extensive rights to challenge your federally guaranteed student loan if collection activity resulted in garnishment of your wages or retirement benefits, offset of your federal or state tax refund or offset of your disability benefits.
You may not be obligated to repay a student loan under certain situations. A case begins with an investigation. Email ggingo@yahoo.com if you would like to discuss further.
If you'd like to do this yourself, you need to first determine what your rights are. Most federal court judges would agree that you have constitutional rights regarding your student loans if these elements are met:
1) Your loan is federally guaranteed;
2) Negative action has been taken against you to enforce the debt, such as:
i. Your wages have been administratively garnished; or,
ii. Your income tax has been administratively garnished; or,
iii. Your social security has been administratively garnished.
If those two elements have been met, you should now demand an administrative hearing to determine:
1) Whether all or part of the debt is unenforceable; and,
2) Whether all or part of the collection costs are unenforceable.
Figuring out who you will contact to demand a hearing can be somewhat challenging. The federal government has the U.S. Department of Education ("DoE") oversee guaranteed student loans. The DoE has private and public guarantee agencies that act on its behalf in collecting these debts. Those agencies have long-standing policies that help them to strong-arm defaulting students into signing new notes where the student agrees to an abusive and unreasonable collection cost in order to restore rights to more student loans and repair of credit. The rub in this is that the collection cost assessed is usually 24.48% of the debt, and the guarantee agency gets to use the official stamp of the DoE to guarantee the repayment of that additional debt by the U.S. government, and that extra 24.48% - where does it go? Why it goes to the guarantee agency of course! The very fiduciary who is charged with protecting the monies of the United States of America! The fox is in the hen house! (The students are the eggs, the hen's are the U.S and the fox is the guarantee agencies. That's true only because students who default are more likely to default again, thus virtually assuring a guarantee agency of excessive, wind-fall income that will be paid by the U.S. government.)
Once you have found your guarantee agency, send them a demand for a hearing. Send a copy to the DoE. The government likes you to use their request for hearing form as it doesn't get to the heart of the issues very well. The government's hearing request form is here. Use this form and check box number "10".
There are three different kinds of hearing - a "paper" hearing where you submit a paper and the hearing officer reviews it and you just lose; a telephonic hearing where you can't see the hearing officer and the people next to him or her and you can't tell that the hearing officer is really just another debt collector who for the moment is trying to appear to be a fair, impartial and knowledgeable hearing officer; or you can have an in-person hearing where you take a court reporter with you and create a record that a federal judge could review. Guess which type we do?
Next, create a document to attach to the government's form. It should look like this:
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Date: _______________
To: _________________
From: _______________
Re: Demand for Discovery and In-Person Administrative Hearing.
Account Number:_______________________
Dear XXXXX,
My name is XXXX. I am the alleged debtor in this matter. I demand discovery and an in-person hearing before a U.S. Department of Education approved hearing officer in order to challenge the existence of the alleged debt and the amount of the alleged debt, including the reasonableness of collection costs. You are advised that the hearing will be recorded by a certified court transcriptionist.
Before I am assigned a hearing officer and a date, time and place for the in-person hearing, I require discovery of the following:
1) A copy of the front and back of the promissory note as it exists today, including all
assignments and allonges thereto;
2) A break-down of payments posted to the account and application of those payments to
principle, interest, and any other type of account; and,
3) A break-down of collection costs and the basis therefore;
4) As a request for admission, please admit that the promissory note is being enforced as a
negotiable instrument pursuant to the Uniform Commercial Code.
5) As a request for production request, and after the above requests have been answered, I
demand to inspect the original promissory note.
Once the above discovery demands have been met, I demand that a time and place be provided for the in-person hearing. It will be contrary to my rights for you to set such a hearing before I have conducted discovery.
I expect that I will be entitled to APA type judicial review in federal court once the administrative hearing has been completed.
Sincerely,
xxxxxxxx
*****************************************************************************Make sure you send that request by certified mail, return receipt. I am interested in what happens, please let me know by emailing me at gingo.george@gmail.com.
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