Can I send Sallie Mae and the State Dept. of Edu after my mother's estate?

“As far as I know” is the same issue that you raised in your other question. You need to get the facts straight and, difficult as it is, separate fact from wishful thinking.

You have not told us, unless I have not been paying attention, in what country you are now living. Is there a way of contract Legal Aid in the state where you have incurred the debts in order to get some legal advice.

@gailcalled I’m in Ecuador. I needed to get as far away from that Sociopath as I could.

I’m trying not to pin my hopes on anything, but I’d like to know what my rights are. As many people know, sometimes customer service isn’t so helpful.

Find a lawyer. Is there not a Legal Aid society in the community where you lived with your parents while you were still at home?

It mostly depends on how her property and accounts were held. If they were mostly joint with the right of survivorship they pass through to your father. Then she might not have an estate.

Your creditors are not going to go through litigation to try to collect from your mother’s estate. It would cost more in legal fees than what you owe, and with no guarantee that they will win. The courts would more than likely tell them to go collect from you instead. She was only a co-signer. You are the principal. Her estate is untouchable – it now belongs to your father.

If you live in Ecuador, and just stop paying your students loans, what can they do? After a while, I suppose the loans will go into their collections department, and at that point they may try to find you, but they couldn’t reach you in Ecuador.

Unless you plan on living abroad forever, you need to work out something with Sallie Mae.

Can’t you defer your loans until you get a job?
I know you want your dad to give you money that you think belongs to you, but you did, in fact, get the benefit of an education, so you should be the one paying the loans back.
I know you won’t like this answer, but not all parents pay for their children’s education.
How would you be paying for these loans had your mother not died?

@Skaggfacemutt Then why would the woman say that it was a viable option? I don’t want to get my hopes up that it will wipe my debt, but still—one of the reasons I had to leave the country and struggle financially was to get away from him.

@Chyna My father refused to help pay for my education despite his high salary. My mother was the only help I had. AND YES, she did expressly state verbally that she wanted to leave me something. We had a very close relationship and she loved all of her children. She was going to her lawyer within a few days to ensure this happened but sadly she died before she could. Now my father is blowing her money on fancy new suits and the mistress he was cheating on her with. Trust me, he’s despicable in every way. A true antisocial personality.

My father is sociopath. One of the things that drives him is crippling other people emotionally, financially and spiritually. See my other questions for more details if you don’t believe me.

http://www.fluther.com/153459/how-can-i-protect-my-terminally-ill-mom-from-my-rageaholic/

@LeavesNoTrace I guarantee you, Sallie Mae is not going to get involved in that kind of litigation. If your mom didn’t leave a will or a trust, all of her assets go to her spouse and there is no way anyone else can touch it without a hell of a court battle, and Sallie Mae would probably rather write off the loan than get involved in a mess like that. No, they have you on the hook as the responsible party, and they will just be happy to leave it like that.

My father is sociopath. One of the things that drives him is crippling other people emotionally, financially and spiritually. See my other questions for more details if you don’t believe me.
You are allowing him to continue to cripple you by letting this eat you alive. You really need to see a therapist to let go of your feelings of hate for this man.
As @Skaggfacemutt has said, since there was no will, your father gets everything.
I know it would be easier on you to receive some money, but I think the more important thing is to get this man totally out of your life and out of your mind.

“But she did advice me that the 31K loan may be able to be forgiven since the cosigner died.”

Wow! If it works, let me know. I might go finance a dream vacation, and then bump off my co-signer so that I can have it for free.

@Skaggfacemutt Mean and tacky of you to say that.

Trust me, I would rather have my Mom alive than have any amount of money. I’m just trying to figure out the issues at hand and deal with reality.

Sorry, my point is that if it was that simple, imagine the consequences. A co-signer could declare bankruptcy and the loan would be forgiven? Not!

I know that you are still seeing your mother’s money as her estate, but that is not true. The money is now your father’s and he didn’t sign anything, so that option is off the table.

@Skaggfacemutt If the loan was in her name, it can be forgiven. And your sense of humor leaves something to be desired. _

@LeavesNoTrace Did your mother have any retirement accounts? Those usually have a designated beneficiary and he can’t touch those. (And what did I tell you about having a thick skin.:) Although it was your mom.)

@LeavesNoTrace The loan was not in your mother’s name. She was the co-signer, right? Because if it was in your mother’s name, then you are not responsible at all. You said, “if the loan was in her name, it can be forgiven.” That is true. But it isn’t, right?

You can not include student loans in bankruptcy.
I don’t know if they will go back against your mother’s “estate,” either. Especially since she doesn’t have one. From what you said, she had a “life insurance policy.”
Student loans aren’t like a regular loan.

Also…didn’t you tell us in this comment that your student loans were cosigned by your father?

Plus you are the MAIN signer of the loans. You are the first person they go after. They go after co-signers second. Then they’ll come back to you.

Are you writing a book?

Also, you said here” that you were only supposed to get 5K. I have no idea where these questions are going or why.

Are you writing a book?

@Dutchess_III I’m not “writing a book”. This is unfortunately the reality I have to deal with and frankly it sucks.

I didn’t realize my father had declined to cosign my loans leaving me and my mother to work it out. I just assumed he had been the cosigner since he earned a higher income. He doesn’t believe that women need college and that I should have just stayed in my small town and been a night-school-educated secretary or receptionist. Thankfully, my mother saw my potential and did everything she could to help me achieve my dreams. Sallie Mae’s site is pretty convoluted and I had a hard time figuring out who the cosigner was but after some more poking around, I did realize that it was actually my Mom.

When most people lose a parent, they don’t have this other sh*t to contend with on top of it and can count on the other parent to do the ethical thing that the deceased wanted (that he said he would do) but my father is not a nice guy to anyone for that matter and is trying to get me to enable him as an abuser by making me grovel for the money. Wants me to ‘apologize’ for yelling at him when he verbally assaulted my sick mother and threatening to call the cops on him when he raised his hand to me—I’m 24 by the way, not a child he can get away with intimidating with physical force.

The 5K, he promised me (I have two reliable witnesses to the conversation) would help greatly with my student loans, but since he’s reneging on that, I’ll have to either have my grandparents intervene on my behalf or see what I can work out with the loan sharks to deal with the problem.

@Dutchess_III if all you’re going to do is put me down or accuse me of lying, don’t respond to my question. I’m having a hard enough time as it is and a little compassion wouldn’t hurt. I know internet anonymity is the perfect cloak for a coward but I’m still a person with feelings and I’m looking for help, not snarky, unfounded criticisms. For your sake, I hope you never encounter such a sociopath and have to deal with what I’ve been through because let me tell you, it’s hell.

I am sorry that you are so upset, and sorry for your loss, but please try to refrain from being so nasty. We do empathize with your situation, but what you are asking is a legal question, not an ethical one, and we have all given you the answer. Your mother’s money is not in an estate or a trust. Upon her demise, your father became the sole owner of her assets, and they are therefore untouchable – no longer hers but his. You got two good bits of advice here. One is to call Sallie Mae and ask that the loan be deferred. Won’t get rid of it, but put it on hold until you are in a better position to start making payments. The other was to check for any retirement accounts or life insurance that she may have put you on as beneficiary. You are not going to be able to legally get that money from your dad, even with an undocumented verbal agreement with witnesses. From what you told us of your dad, we just think that it would be emotionally detrimental for you to continue in that pursuit.

I don’t think 5k is worth the trouble. I really don’t. I mean, what real difference is there between owing $37,000 and $32,000? It would probably cost THAT much,at least, to litigate. And you’ll still be left with the student loans.

Also, you were the main co-signer of the loans. I’m sure you didn’t take them out with the thought in mind that you weren’t going to be the one to pay them off, and that the co-signer would. They’re your responsibility, and if you renig on them, it hurts the rest of the country. It affects the ability of others to get an education.

And lots and lots of people have to deal with the fact that whoever the executor of an estate is, that executor quite often goes out of the their way to get as much for themselves as they possibly can, while handing out as little as others, no matter what the will reads. So…you’re not alone in this kind of thing.

@Skaggfacemutt How was I being ‘nasty’ when I’m being accused of trolling this forum when this is a serious and very upsetting situation for me. I didn’t use abusive language—I defended myself and made a valid point about internet anonymity and people saying things they wouldn’t say to another’s face.

@Dutchess_III The 5K wouldn’t bring down the balance much but it would help me stay current on the loan and not get into trouble with the loan agency. My mother said she wanted to leave something for me to help with my student debt and jumpstart my life a bit. She certainly did not mean for that money to go toward my father’s mistress and his tacky Euro sports car.

It will help you stay current, for about 6 months. Then what? They’ll put it on deferment due to financial hardships, but the interest will keep piling up and before you know it, it’s back up to the original amount and still climbing. It’s barely a drop in the bucket.

You need to figure out what the real issue is here…5K can’t be it. Are you pissed because your Mom wanted you to have something and your dad is withholding it? I don’t blame you. But it’s going to tear you up if you don’t let it go. You will be the one punished. No one else. Not even your Mom.

I think probably everyone goes through this shite at times like this.
My Mom had alzheimers. About 3 months before she died, in 2005, my sister custom re-wrote my Moms will. If there was another one we weren’t able to find it. Mom had told us for years she wanted to be able to leave something to each of us.

Long story short, in 1995 my Mom had taken out a small $2000 retirement policy to be paid to me when she died (I was a single Mom, really struggling, while my sister and her husband were successful professionals.) My sister tried to take that $2000 via her bogus will.

What she ended up with, though, was at least $30,000 which she split up into $10,000 CD’s for each of her 3 kids.

She tried to take everything that my mother had ever given any of us over the years. It didn’t work. And it certainly wasn’t worth the rift.

And so it goes.

@Windmill Your sis sounds dreadful. Do you still speak to her?

I wish we could back to where we used to be. But…I think she assumes, and usually rightly so, that I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with her. But she’s wrong. A million dollars cant compare to family, especially when you have no other. And neither does she.I’ve reached out but…am rejected. Embarrassment over her unrestrained greed? Kill the witness ? I don’t know. I only know that I lost my sister and lost out on being part of my nieces lives. Not worth it.

@Windmill I’ve seen this so many times. You can’t do anything about it when money comes into play like that. I was in banking and finance. The best answer I heard was “It saves on Christmas presents”.

@Windmill I’m so sorry to hear that. As for my father, if it wasn’t for all the other horrible, violent and damaging things he’d done to our family, I’d be willing to let it go to preserve the relationship but the truth is, there’s not relationship that’s worth preserving anyway in this case. :(

@LeavesNoTrace I’m sorry you had such a bad relationship. Parents need to do their best. You have to take a test to get a driving license, anyone can have kids.

Well, have we come to a consensus? (Questions like this make me feel like we’re in Congress!)

I have had a lot of dealings with Sallie Mae. If you are ever discussing anything important with them, be sure to call back several times to see if you get the same answer. You may be talking to someone who knows what they’re talking about, or maybe not. I’ve gotten a lot of misinformation from them in the past. They are a horrible, horrible company to deal with.

Work with Sallie Mae to get your loans current. Do this immediately, do not count on the $5,000. They can typically help you out a little by back dating a forbearance, but in the future, see them before there’s a problem to understand what options you have. Once you get behind on your student loans, your options quickly become limited. You don’t want to let SM ruin your life, They are worse than the IRS.

The cosigner is for collecting money if you don’t pay your loans. They will not cancel a debt simply because the cosigner is deceased. If she were the borrower, then there are often provisions in student loans for cancelling the debt (even if there are cosigners). @Adirondackwannabe is correct, if there is a beneficiary form for any of her assets (life insurance), CD, whatever), the money will go directly to the beneficiary without passing through the executor (if there is one) – at least this is what happened when my mother died.