If you’re filing for bankruptcy (or considering filing), you may be wondering, “Will my student loans get discharged?”  The short answer is no.  Student loans cannot be discharged in any chapter of bankruptcy (Chapter 7 or 13), unless you can prove that the loan creates an undue hardship on you or your family.  It is very difficult to prove undue hardship to the court, unless you are physically unable to work and your chance of employment in the future is virtually zero.

If you want to discharge your student loans by claiming the “undue hardship” exception, you must file a separate motion with the bankruptcy court, and then appear before the judge to explain your hardship.  Convincing the judge that you have an undue hardship is a very difficult task, unless you are physically unable to work.  If your student loans are a large part of your debt, you are probably better off not pursuing bankruptcy since courts are very unlikely to discharge student loans.

Even though you can’t usually discharge student loans, you can consolidate them under a Chapter 13 repayment plan.  If you include your student loans in the Chapter 13 repayment plan, you will still owe whatever the balance is on your student loans once you complete your bankruptcy repayment plan.

Something else you can do is challenge the loan balance under Chapter 13.  If your student loans have been transferred between lenders multiple times, and it’s not clear how much is owed, you can get a court determination of the actual loan balance.  Once a judge determines how much is actually owed, the bankruptcy court decision is binding for the lender – even if the repayment period stretches beyond the end of the bankruptcy plan.

See if you can work out a repayment plan with your student loan lender that stretches payment out over a longer period of time.  Depending on how far in default you are, you may be able to get your student loan lender to defer repayment until your financial circumstances have improved.  Consider consolidating all your student loans into one single monthly payment that stretches over a longer period of time.