Who We Are

Who We Are.

We are a multiracial and multicultural group of American tax payers who rank among the longest-paying student borrowers in our country and dedicated members of our society stuck in loans that leave few options. We are a generation of responsible borrowers who are shackled to high default risk and deplete of financial freedoms with which to manage our loan repayment. Some of us are tied to abusers through these loans. Some of us have uncooperative former spouses, leaving us to pay the full balance of our shared loans. Some of us are public service workers, dedicating our lives to improving the lives of others. We all seek freedom to choose how we manage our loans and the right to separate these loans.

Read Our Stories

We are a generation of borrowers...

,... American tax payers who rank among the longest-paying student borrowers in our country, having paid on these loans for 15-20+ years. Many of us are first generation college graduates. As such, our loans are predominately FFEL Program loan. Our combined payments, to date, comprise 80% of our combined original balance, yet we still owe 136%.

Many borrowers have FFEL loans, which means they have not been able to benefit from the Cares Act or COVID pause due to the fact that the Department of Education has barred reconsolidation of these loans to Direct.

Both my husband and I are first generation, Latino students. I have received my PhD and have been working as a tenure track and tenured professor at a Hispanic serving, first generation focused public university for 15 years. My husband did not finish his PhD because he has had to work multiple adjunct and freelance writing jobs to help us financially. Our institution qualifies for PSLF. We have attempted to convert our loans into Direct Loans so that we could take advantage of the PSLF but were informed that our FFEL Spousal loans do not count for PSLF, nor can they be consolidated into Direct loans. We are in a vacuum. We are trying to meet our obligations, but these loans just keep growing, we now owe two times more than originally held. And there’s no end in sight to this burden.

These loans steal our financial liberty...

Today, spousal consolidation debtors (FFEL and Direct Loan) face a myriad of issues on top of the ones they share with the mainstream of student loan holders. In the case of domestic abuse, victims remain financially shackled to their former abusers only through these loans. Likewise, for divorced couples, an individual remains tied to their uncooperative spouse only through these loans. Neither lawyers nor courts can separate these loans in divorce cases or even bankruptcies.

Some of us have FFEL Spousal Consolidations and others have Direct Loan Spousal Consolidations. We are trying to separate these loans in order to gain financial independence for repayment but we all have run into the same roadblock: spousal consolidation loans can never be moved, separated, or addressed in any way other than by an act of congress.

Both parties in the loan must sign off on any income-based repayment or any forbearance. Each partner must share financial information, must agree on the phone if asking for deferments. In the case of domestic abuse victims, this is not only insane but also it is dangerous.

As time went on, the drugs and drinking became worse. The abuse became more severe. I was beaten, had a gun pulled on me, was spat on, but the verbal abuse was the worst of all. The final straw was the abuse was affecting my children. In 2003, I received counseling from the YWCA as well as a private counselor provided to me through the YWCA. I finally found the strength to file for divorce in April of 2003 immediately after receiving an ex-parte order of protection...The loan company did not want partial payments so I would call my ex and tell him it was time to make the payment. Either he would not pay, put me off, spout off abusive statements, insist that the debt was all mine or make me show up to his work on a set pay day only to tell me I'd have to come back another day he didn’t have the extra to pay that day.

We remain bound to the risk...

In 2009 I lost my job during The Great Recession. The cost of providing child care, housing, transportation, food, and paying student loans took its toll, and we filed for bankruptcy that year. Another blow came when we learned that even through bankruptcy, our joint consolidated loan would live on.

We are not wealthy or comfortable...

Yes, we have mortgages and meager retirements. However, at a time in one's life when they are supposed to be the most financially secure, many remain living check to check. They have done so for most of their careers, because finance options are severely limited. Retirement funds are either out of reach or available only through thinning pension funds, leaving most without confidence that they can move forward to retirement by switching careers.

Income Driven Repayment forgiveness may be attainable by a handful, but generally we have 5 to 15 more years of payments. This puts us out of reach for the tax exemption on IDR forgiveness through 2025. Because we cannot reconsolidate to Direct loans, we will not receive any credit for the current IDR waiver. Since we will remain check to check for the foreseeable future, 85% will not be able to save for the impending tax bomb on their loan's compounded balance, meaning they likely will be paying or garnished well into retirement and the cycle will continue.

60% of us feel stress once a day or at least weekly when considering budget constraints.

I am 70 years old and I am currently the principal of a K-8 school. I desperately need to retire for health reasons, but I cannot retire due to my spousal consolidation loan. I simply would not be able to afford living expenses and this loan in retirement. Because the loan cannot be separated, I cannot and have never been able exercise financial liberty over the decades to reconsolidate it into the Direct loan program and leverage my 50 years in public service towards Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).

Generally, we did not seek these loans...

The only entities that had any clue that Joint Spousal Consolidation Loan Program would end were Congress, The Department of Education, Servicers and lobbyists. It is clear from prospectuses dated in 2005 that lobbies/servicers understood impending legislation to end this program.

Only 6% of members knowingly sought these loans. From 2000 through 2005, there was clearly an increase in efforts by servicers to sell these loans to couples struggling to make payments. The program was shuttered on June 30, 2006 to avert high risk of defaults due to divorce rates. While Congress, Department of Education, Servicers and investors walked away, borrowers would remain ignorant to the change and bear the high risk since 2006. No opt in or opt out was offered to borrowers of these loans. Instead, these high risk loans were intermixed in a portfolio with other consolidation loans to whitewash their risk factor.

In January 2006, just months before the legislature discontinued the FFELP program, we were advised by the Department of Education to consolidate our loans into FFEL Spousal Consolidation loans. We had just had a baby, and my husband was not working so that he could help with childcare. I was a graduate student finishing qualifying exams and then my dissertation, in my PhD program. As a teaching assistant, I made $12,500 a year, and without my husband’s income as an adjunct, we would have not have been able to pay anything on his $180,000 loan balance. Instead of offering hardship forbearance or limited payment options due to his unemployment or any other options to my husband, the Dept. of Education representative recommended we consolidate our loans so they would be deferred because I was still in school. That was the solution we were given, no others.

I can vividly remember sitting on my sunroom floor, with my newborn and my husband, signing the paperwork to consolidate my loans with my husband’s for Sallie Mae. We were called by a representative, who suggested that we consolidate our undergraduate and graduate Direct Loans together so that we would have one lump payment, and take advantage of a lower interest rate... we had just purchased our first home, had a newborn, and had just started our first teaching jobs. We were confident that we had made the right decision based on everything the representative had told us. We began paying our loans anticipating paying for the 20 year term we chose for repayment. Had there been any inkling that the PSLF program would be created, and our new loan would be excluded, we never would have agreed to consolidate.

We are dedicated public service employees, and first generation college graduates, who’ve been working and paying on these loans for 15-20+ years who still do not see any end in sight. Teachers. Firefighters. Social Workers. Police. Military. Government Service workers. The list is long.

SpousalConsolidation.DoUsPart!