@Anonymous wrote:
Hi...
Ive been reading your situation through the threads and cant help but wonder if you are being mislead. Not by the answers here but by Chase Bank themselves. See, when you went to school and accepted your privte loan you immedietly fell under the Higher Education act of 1997. This act was formed by big privite banks to help them cast big fees on student loans and force payback w the same protection afforded Federal Loans. But fast Forward to today, where our beloved current president has plegued us with his medical reform bill and you may find some solice. See, with this bill piggybacked the Student Loan Overhaul of 2010 - you should read the details pertaining to student loans. in short, this bill modified two big problems of the 1997 Act. High fees, and Pay Back Requirements. It reduces the mandatory repayment schedule of 15% of income to 10% of income. You make $27000 annual so your payments are roughly $337.00 and from what I gathered your still paying that. But the reduced rate of 10% would decrease your payments to roughly $225.00. What this means to you is your still bound by law to repay this debt. (Lesson learned, paying the interest while attending school should be your future advice to family and friends) but under Obamas Student Loan Overhaul you should only be repaying the $225.00 (10% of income) w/out any added fees. I would encourage you to follow up on this and then approach your bank. Privite lending tactics of education loans is the reason the overhaul came to be... Please let me know if this helped.
This article provides a decent overview of the changes that were implemented to student loans along with the healthcare bill that passed in 2010. Those changes had significant impacts for some lenders that were also involved in private student lending (and who previously could also fund federal student loans), but it did not make any changes to private student loans. There are no mandatory income-based payment plans for private loans, even if they were made after 2014. It seems like you are confusing/conflating some of the changes that happened when the PAYE plan was introduced as well.
Private student loans are a contract between the borrower and a private bank. They have no federal gaurentee, and so Congress doesn't control these loans like they do federally-backed ones. They are subject to the same laws as other borrowing, with the notable exception that private student loans are treated the same in bankruptcy as federal ones. Otherwise, as long as they don't run afoul of usury laws or other limits - private student loan lenders can lend as much as they want, set payments how they want, and tack on any fees that the contract they entered with the borrower allows.
