For the past 20 years, the United States has placed a high priority on higher education. Everyone wants their kids to go to an Ivy League college and get a high-paying job after graduation. The only problem with this theory is that it doesn’t work. There are no high paying jobs available for college graduates these days. In fact, the unemployment rate for new college graduates is around 40% when these children finish school. To add insult to injury, they will be overwhelmed with student loans for this expensive education. Many ignorant young adults believe that they can file for bankruptcy and eliminate these loans, but they cannot. Sure, education is good, but not when it leads to bankruptcy. The problem is that when young adults have to pay off student loans, the minimum wage job they can get is not enough to help them survive. So now you have a new generation of college graduates sleeping on mom’s couch as they file bankruptcy to get rid of other debt they can’t pay due to student loans.
Many of these students continue their education to avoid paying off student loans. There are many young college graduates applying to large retailers who have PhDs and Masters degrees. It’s not that they didn’t want to get out of school and get a job, but when they found out there was no job available, they did so twice and went back to school to continue their education. One thing that many people don’t know is that student loans are not repaid while the person is in school. Many are now becoming professional students as they are piling up huge amounts of debt. Student loan debt has reached such exorbitant amounts that many experts now call it a bubble. This debt has now exceeded a trillion dollars in the U.S. This is just crazy, what happened with the days when kids went to college for two years and transferred to a four-year college, making their way through the school waiting tables. In those days, children got out of school debt free. There are several people here to blame when it comes to this issue. First, there has been a high priority, but in higher education from K to 12. It has been put into the heads of the children that they will be nothing unless they get an expensive education. Second, the government has made these secured loans available to anyone who requests them. Consequently, many of these people do not realize what they are getting into and find themselves changing careers early in life without earning enough money to live on and repay these loans.
Now when a young adult with debt decides to file for bankruptcy, the first question they will ask the bankruptcy attorney, is it possible to eliminate student loans in bankruptcy liquidation? When the bankruptcy attorney says no, they will probably follow up with what they heard was possible because they read it on the internet. Technically, it is possible, but the burden of proof is extreme enough for a person to include them in their bankruptcy filing. The person must show that they will never be able to pay off these loans. So, as a general rule of thumb, a bankruptcy attorney will look at the age and physical condition of the person. The fact that someone cannot get a job is not a sufficient reason to cancel these loans. Generally, it will take someone to have a catastrophic accident or illness in which they become disabled or someone to become old and no longer in the job market. The elusive Chupacabra is probably much easier to find in the desert. In other words, it is almost impossible to file bankruptcy for student loans.