Capital One summons HELP

[Anonymous]

I am sorry to hear about all these hard times you are having.  As soon as I saw you had Great Lakes as one of your student loan servicers, I thought I would chime in here as I also have them.  Try applying for "Income Based Repayment" programs to get your payments down.  Some cases they can even get your payment down to zero!  

[Kree]

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@Anonymous wrote:

So is it your advice to just ask the opinion of a lawyer first before doing anything?? I feel terrible that I have not even written the judge yet like the lady at the courthouse advised Friday. I am just so scared at this point. I just know I cannot afford a lawyer. Thank you for taking the time to respond and offer advice!!

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@Kree wrote:

Contact a lawyer to help with this. Not being served properly is a pretty big deal and you could get punitive damages from both Capital 1 as well as from whoever "served" you.

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There is a good chance that a lawyer would do this work on contingency.  They only get paid when they win the case, because lawyer costs can be part of the lawsuit.   This is also a good sign of a strong case. Lawyers like making money, so if one won't do it on contingency, then it might not be worth persuing legal action. 

[Anonymous]

What is going to happen once the judge or whomever receives my letter?
Will they just serve me then or???

[Anonymous]

Pnrbma:
Sorry, I missed your answer. First, there is a repayment calculator on the Federal Aid site.
https://studentloans.gov/myDirectLoan/mobile/repayment/repaymentEstimator.action
Plug in your income and loan info (or just log in) and this will give you a better idea of what you can be paying over the short and long term.
For now, if I were you I would be applying for one of the Income-driven repayment plans. All qualify for loan forgiveness (if you don't qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, etc there are these forgiveness options, just with longer repayment.) The most popular are the Income-based repayment plan and REPAY (or PAY depending on your loan years).
https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans
They are based off of your discretionary income, 10% for REPAY and 10/15% for IBR. Forgiveness is at 20 years of (240) payments or 25 for graduate loans. There are two other plans but I think the monthly cost is higher. If you're married, they will take both income for REPAY. Switching plans will also capitalize your interest, but if there calculator says you'll have money forgiven imo ignore it. (Plus the calculator is wrong; it's based on an era where people got annual, significant raises.) Given what you're saying, I highly suspect your payments will be $0. When you fill out the form, select a plan. The servicer will often *not* select the lowest plan, I've learned to never check the option for them to select it. The quickest method is the IRS upload. Except for maybe the first time, I do not recommend this. Instead I do the paycheck method. You upload a scanned copy of the hand-signed application and a scanned copy of your income to the servicer directly. I think Great Lakes also has an email? The fine print is they will set your payment for a whole year based on your income docs so choose your lowest ones possible within the range they accept.
You apply, then get a monthly payment about that is good for 1 year. Before that is up, you recertify by submitting you income info, very easy to do if you use the IRS method (5min). If at any time your situation changes and you qualify for a lower payment, recertify at any the, getting a new payment for another whole year. Always save your paperwork. I even log my calls. The servicers are terrible about the details imo. CFPB can be your friend.
Feel free to PM me. I will walk you through any of this. It's very simple and it can take such a Weight off your shoulders.
Good luck with the court stuff.

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much for this!!  I will look more into this tonight when I am home!

I appreciate this more than you know!

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@Anonymous wrote:
Pnrbma:
Sorry, I missed your answer. First, there is a repayment calculator on the Federal Aid site.
https://studentloans.gov/myDirectLoan/mobile/repayment/repaymentEstimator.action
Plug in your income and loan info (or just log in) and this will give you a better idea of what you can be paying over the short and long term.
For now, if I were you I would be applying for one of the Income-driven repayment plans. All qualify for loan forgiveness (if you don't qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, etc there are these forgiveness options, just with longer repayment.) The most popular are the Income-based repayment plan and REPAY (or PAY depending on your loan years).
https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans
They are based off of your discretionary income, 10% for REPAY and 10/15% for IBR. Forgiveness is at 20 years of (240) payments or 25 for graduate loans. There are two other plans but I think the monthly cost is higher. If you're married, they will take both income for REPAY. Switching plans will also capitalize your interest, but if there calculator says you'll have money forgiven imo ignore it. (Plus the calculator is wrong; it's based on an era where people got annual, significant raises.) Given what you're saying, I highly suspect your payments will be $0. When you fill out the form, select a plan. The servicer will often *not* select the lowest plan, I've learned to never check the option for them to select it. The quickest method is the IRS upload. Except for maybe the first time, I do not recommend this. Instead I do the paycheck method. You upload a scanned copy of the hand-signed application and a scanned copy of your income to the servicer directly. I think Great Lakes also has an email? The fine print is they will set your payment for a whole year based on your income docs so choose your lowest ones possible within the range they accept.
You apply, then get a monthly payment about that is good for 1 year. Before that is up, you recertify by submitting you income info, very easy to do if you use the IRS method (5min). If at any time your situation changes and you qualify for a lower payment, recertify at any the, getting a new payment for another whole year. Always save your paperwork. I even log my calls. The servicers are terrible about the details imo. CFPB can be your friend.
Feel free to PM me. I will walk you through any of this. It's very simple and it can take such a Weight off your shoulders.
Good luck with the court stuff.

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[Anonymous]

I am currently on the websites you listed working on this! I work for a University - have for ten years. I wonder if I qualify for the public forgiveness?? What do you know about the Employment Certification Form?? The link that says it has more info does not work.

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@Anonymous wrote:
Pnrbma:
Sorry, I missed your answer. First, there is a repayment calculator on the Federal Aid site.
https://studentloans.gov/myDirectLoan/mobile/repayment/repaymentEstimator.action
Plug in your income and loan info (or just log in) and this will give you a better idea of what you can be paying over the short and long term.
For now, if I were you I would be applying for one of the Income-driven repayment plans. All qualify for loan forgiveness (if you don't qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, etc there are these forgiveness options, just with longer repayment.) The most popular are the Income-based repayment plan and REPAY (or PAY depending on your loan years).
https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans
They are based off of your discretionary income, 10% for REPAY and 10/15% for IBR. Forgiveness is at 20 years of (240) payments or 25 for graduate loans. There are two other plans but I think the monthly cost is higher. If you're married, they will take both income for REPAY. Switching plans will also capitalize your interest, but if there calculator says you'll have money forgiven imo ignore it. (Plus the calculator is wrong; it's based on an era where people got annual, significant raises.) Given what you're saying, I highly suspect your payments will be $0. When you fill out the form, select a plan. The servicer will often *not* select the lowest plan, I've learned to never check the option for them to select it. The quickest method is the IRS upload. Except for maybe the first time, I do not recommend this. Instead I do the paycheck method. You upload a scanned copy of the hand-signed application and a scanned copy of your income to the servicer directly. I think Great Lakes also has an email? The fine print is they will set your payment for a whole year based on your income docs so choose your lowest ones possible within the range they accept.
You apply, then get a monthly payment about that is good for 1 year. Before that is up, you recertify by submitting you income info, very easy to do if you use the IRS method (5min). If at any time your situation changes and you qualify for a lower payment, recertify at any the, getting a new payment for another whole year. Always save your paperwork. I even log my calls. The servicers are terrible about the details imo. CFPB can be your friend.
Feel free to PM me. I will walk you through any of this. It's very simple and it can take such a Weight off your shoulders.
Good luck with the court stuff.

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[Anonymous]

pnrbma: Oh that's great!! I'm looking back through your posts and at the amount you make a month you might not qualify for income-driven repayment but you'll have to check that out. However working for the University definitely qualifies so you might not have much left to pay off.
I'm not directly involved in PSLF but I just learned this week from someone here that past work can qualify. I think in order to be qualifying payments (10 years = 240 total, even if it's not all at once) you have to be making each monthly payment on time, on certain repayment plans (IDR, standard, etc.) and certain student loans. At the time you "apply" you have to be employed at the job so that's good you're still working there. Each year you will need to turn in your employment certification too. https://myfedloan.org/documents/repayment/fd/pslf-ecf.pdf
If you didn't you have to get it together before the real application is sent to the gov at the 10 years required for forgiveness. I've heard that people who work for only one employer also have a much easier time. I can send you a link to the gov application if you want a peek at it. It is only the government that gives you the green light and you will have to keep making payments until you are forgiven.
I've read that after you're all signed up with your loan servicer you can see your qualifying payment on the servicer website. Keep copies of everything
but the servicer will not be making the final decisions; the gov will.

So as soon as possible, apply for the PSLF (I would also try for IDR since they can only say no). You can ask for a month deferment while you get it in to pause your payments if you need to but as soon as they start processing the application they also switch you to an administrative forbearance (otherwise I would never use them because I think they do not count as qualifying payments). Get your employment certification forms signed and ready, and when you get you get your count you'll hopefully be very close to forgiveness depending on how long you've been making payments so far.
Hope this helps!

[Anonymous]

Edit: when I said that people do IBR if they're married and want to avoid both incomes being counted, I think this is only relevant if they are married filing separately.

[Anonymous]

As I am filling out the form it says "Not all of your loans are eligible for the plans marked (*) above, so estimates are shown using only the eligible loan balance. You can consolidate your FFEL loans to become eligible for PSLF or other Income-Driven Repayment plans such as REPAYE."

Do you have any experience with this?

[Anonymous]

Pnrbma:
I don't have experience personally, but I have read up on it little for someone with a plus loan. The FFEL don't qualify for IDR or PSLF so what people do is they consolate their loans. From what I understand it turns your loans into a new, large loan with locked interest. It with show up as a new loan on your credit report too. If you have a wide range of interest rates you won't keep them. You'd have to check to see which rate the consolidation will become.
The other option is to just leave the FFEL out of the IDR. If it's a small loan amount it might not be worth it. I've seen people do this rather than consolidate because it restarts your qualifying payment counts.