topic Private Student Loan in Collection/Lawsuit, Need Advice Please in Student Loans

Private Student Loan in Collection/Lawsuit, Need Advice Please

Anonymous — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:51:57 GMT

Hello everyone-

I obtained a private student loan ~ 8 yrs ago, went to National Collegiate Trust/AES [I am supuer confused, is AES and NCT the same thing?] from the original Lender and then to "A" C.A. I was doing monthly payments to this C.A., then suddenly they dissapeared, then a new C.A. "Law Offices of Patenaude & Felix" in California bought this loan. Now, they are suing me.

I talked to them yesterday and they told me that I have different options for them to put the lawsuit aside, one is to get myself on a payment plan and one is to do a settlement. I have 30 days to do this since I received this lawsuit papers 4 days ago. The amount is for ~$12-000-13000

I am very confused on what to do here.

Should I contact National Collegiate Trust/AES and see if they can work with me now that I have a job and work on a payment plan/settlement? Should I work a payment plan with the new C.A. or do a settlement?

How much should I offer them? Is there a document I can read on settlement stuff?

I dont want this sue to go on, so I want to do something in the next week. As I said, I am pretty clueless on which option to take here. What would you guys recommend?

Thanks in advance,

Mikey

Re: Private Student Loan in Collection/Lawsuit, Need Advice Please

Anonymous — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 22:10:54 GMT

Is this actually a private loan or a federally guaranteed one?

Re: Private Student Loan in Collection/Lawsuit, Need Advice Please

Anonymous — Sat, 17 Aug 2013 08:37:24 GMT

Private Loan originally from Chase, cosigned by my mom.

Thanks for all the replies and the tardiness on replying.

I live in California and this is where the loan was obtained. The issue, My mom cosigned me, I was so young, immature and whish I could go back and do things different, but I cant. I was serve the lawsuit papers last week and have the 30 days to respond. I don't have the money to pay the fees of an attorney, so that is the reason why I am seeking advice here.

I dont know if I should start a payment plan with this company I mentioned or simply see if I can settle the debt, both options which this law collection firm seems to be willing to offer me. I told them I would call back next week with an answer, still not sure on what to do.

Lets say I settle, how do I make sure they remove that info from my credit and my moms? How do I know they will not sell the differential amount not paid to another CA and then sometime later I have to pay for that?

Thanks again for your advice, I will be checking the replies every few hours.

Re: Private Student Loan in Collection/Lawsuit, Need Advice Please

SCF — Sat, 17 Aug 2013 16:32:41 GMT

First things first, read up on the Statute of Limitations for debts of this type in your state. This may be tricky to navigate, and chances are your state has some type of Legal Services or Legal Aid society that provides free advice to people who cannot afford to consult their own attorney. Find their website and use it, hopefully they've got some FAQs you can use to sort it out, and maybe even a free 1-800 number to call for limited advice.

If they are within the SoL, then you need to proceed as your planning if you want to avoid being sued. A first step can be to contact the original lender and see if they will pull the debt back from the CA, but not all of them are willing or able to do that. Since this is an external CA (not a department of the original lender - as far as I can tell), and it's already been sold once, I don't think your chances are good, but it might happen.

If you work with the CA, the choice between payments and settlement is yours based on your finances, just be sure you can stick to the plan you make. Hop over to the Rebuilding Your Credit forum and read about Pay For Delete and other folks' experiences dealing with CAs. Other than the provision severely limiting how they are discharged in bankruptcy, private student loans are very similar to other types of unsecured installment debt, so many of the experiences there will apply to you, even if they aren't specifically about student loans.