Sallie Mae suddenly says I owe them $8000 from 16 years ago

[oatmealblue]

I haven't seen this issue in any other forums, so I'll post here.

Today, I received a letter from Sallie Mae claiming I owe them $8000 for a student loan I took in 1998.

I graduated from school in 2000 and grad school in 2008. I paid for everything through federal student loans. My credit score is in the 700s. My credit report lists no negative accounts. I'm up to date on absolutely everything.

Sallie Mae has never contacted me in the intervening 16 years.

Needless to say, I'm skeptical about this loan. My bet is that I consolidated it, as I did for all my other loans.

So my question is, what can I do? If it's not on my credit report, and I've been able to graduate from school and get loans, do I need to worry about it?

[jd352]

Hopefully you saved your paper work from consolidations and payoff amounts. I would ask them to send you proof of the debt and see if you can match it with the payoffs.

I'm not sure if you have kept a record of credit reports over the years, I keep mine since I started taking out SL's which was my first experience with credit. Just because it is not on your CR now, doesn't mean it wasn't there and fell off due to non-payment many years ago (after 7 years baddies fall off of CR). But, that doesn't essentially mean that still cant try to collect it. They obviously lost track of where it was paid. Hopefully you can match it up.

Ideally, you should worry about it. SallieMae can attempt to garnish wages/tax refunds to pay what they believe you owe them.

[SCF]

You're going to want to figure this out - if you do still owe on a federal loan that amount can follow you for the rest of your life.  Federal loans have no statute of limitations, and they do not need a judgment to garnish your wages, seize your tax returns, or even attach your Social Security when you get there.

You should log in to the National Student Loan Data System (nslds.ed.gov) as well as going through any documentation you have from your original loans and consolidation.  You can also ask Sallie Mae for supporting documentation for their claim and compare it to what you find.