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Back in 2012, I had Sallie Mae (later became Navient) as my private student loan of which I have defaulted on. In 2017, I filed BK7, Navient was not discharged, as expected. In 2019, the charged off Navient loan fell off my credit report.
For the last week or so, I kept getting missed calls on my phone so I called back after finding out this was a debt colletion agency. Currently my report is clean other than BK7 on record. I have an unpaid parking citation that have not hit my credit report yet so I assumed it was related to this.
I called, verified my account, they were asking about my $19k student loan that was defaulted. I hung up.
Will this re-appear again on my credit report? Will they go after me?
I was in DC, perma resident of PA when I took out this loan. I now live in WA.
Pretty sure private student loans fall under the same rules as normal bad debt. There's a SOL and after 7 years it can't be reported.
+1 to what Brian said - if it's a private student loan, you only have to worry about SOL for debts.
That doesn't mean that they can't keep trying to collect, though the debt may be time-barred.
@calyx wrote:+1 to what Brian said - if it's a private student loan, you only have to worry about SOL for debts.
That doesn't mean that they can't keep trying to collect, though the debt may be time-barred.
Navient will definitely try to collect, but their letters will have a disclosure at the bottom that the debt will not be reported and that they will not sue, after the SOL runs out.
What SOL do I look at? Do I look at the SOL from the state that I originally took the loan out of?
I took the loan out while perma resident of PA. I currently reside in WA.
I looked up SOL on bad debt collection for each states.
Washington:
Contracts: 4 years,
Contracts under seal: 20 years.
Negotiable instruments: 6 years (13 PA C.S.A. .§3118).
Does this mean I am off the hook? I haven't received any letters for months. Just the week I kept getting missed calls on my phone, that's when I learned.
Delaware (where Navient is headquartered) is 3 years, which is also another one to check.
So, the debt is time barred, which means if they take you to court (they can still sue) you have a good defense to keep them from collecting/issuing a judgement.
Please note, that statute of limitations only has to do with legal actions, it doesn't mean you don't owe the money any more, just that they're limited on attempts to collect. They can still sell the debt to debt buyers, people may still try to collect, but you're protected from judgements and other legal actions.
Like Brian said - if you get collection letters, you should see language somewhere indicating that it is time barred and can't be reported to the bureaus.
Thank you! All the discussion here makes me feel better and more prepared should anything happen.
Out of curiosity, are there any other reports that this might appear on other than the 3 credit bureaus?
There are a number of other CRAs beyond the big three - ARS, Innovis, LexisNexis are the ones that I see referred to.
A bigger list can be found through the CFPB here (including additional agencies that cover things like insurance, work history, rental history, checking/bank accounts, etc):
https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_consumer-reporting-companies-list.pdf
Just as a note - if you apply for credit in an amount greater than 150k (so think mortgage), lenders can request a complete file, which would go beyond the 7yr exclusion period. So just because it can't be seen through consumer reporting doesn't mean it's gone forever. Plus banks have internal files that will oftentimes have much older history (for example: I know Chase still knows me from the car loan I had back in 2006-2009).