The US Government Pushed Hundreds of Married Couples Into Disastrous Student Loans

New data shows just how widespread the problem is.

Mother Jones illustration; Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

When the Biden administration made it easier last year for Americans doing public service work to have their student loans forgiven, thousands of borrowers saw their debts reduced or eliminated altogether. But some were left out

One group of debtors that fell through the cracks: couples who used a government program to consolidate their loans after getting married. The plight of borrowers with spousal consolidation loans hasn’t gotten much media coverage, and new numbers obtained through a Freedom of Information request suggest why. According to FOIAed material shared with Mother Jones by the Student Borrower Protection Center, in total, there are only 776 borrowers with spousal consolidation loans that are still being repaid or are expected to be repaid in the future. That’s just a tiny fraction of the 45 million people with student debt in the United States, but their situations can be quite dire. 

“This was a very unique product that was created, and the fact that you can’t separate them—I’m not aware of any other product that is designed in this way,” says Persis Yu, policy director at the Student Borrower Protection Center. “They stopped making these loans back in 2006, so these are really old loans at this point.”

Consolidated loans can become especially problematic when marriages fall apart.

“Divorce does not legally impact the liability on these loans—they were written specifically to say that both borrowers will remain on the hook for these loans,” Yu notes. “That requires the former spouses to work together in order to make payments.” This could put borrowers in physical danger. “Domestic violence is a really big problem with these loans,” Yu notes. “These loans actually can put survivors of domestic violence in a very precarious situation.”

But even when marriages don’t involve abuse and don’t end in divorce, spousal consolidation loans can still cause major financial issues.

Chris Alldredge, who created a Facebook group for borrowers with these loans, says that his and his wife’s consolidated loan prevented them from having their debt canceled through the public service loan forgiveness program. 

For borrowers like Chris and his wife, whose loans were consolidated in 2005 before the forgiveness program was created in 2007, the issue took on a new urgency in 2021 when the Biden administration announced its temporary student debt reform. The new waiver made it easier for borrowers with some types of loans to pursue forgiveness. But the waiver didn’t do much to address spousal consolidation loans.

So after browsing a Facebook group about loan forgiveness that didn’t have much information related to his specific situation, Chris decided to create a new group. At first, Chris expected his new Facebook group would be small. Prior to 2021, he hadn’t actually known anyone else who had a spousal consolidation loan. “We’re a disparate constellation of stories just strewn across the internet,” he says. “It felt really lonely to not have anyone to talk about it.”

But connecting on social media with other people in a similar situation has helped Chris feel less alone. “It was amazing to know that there were other people out there that were sharing the same story,” Chris says. “My wife and I, we had more or less just given up for years. We were just like, ‘We’re going to die with this. This is what it’s going to be, this is our reality, we’re just going to carry this loan to our graves with us.’”

Now, Chris has pinned his hopes on Congress, where lawmakers have introduced legislation that would allow borrowers with these loans to separate them. That would make it easier for Chris to have his debt forgiven.

“My short term plans are to figure out how to continue to pull people into our group and to try to get the Joint Consolidation Loan Separation Act pushed through Congress and Senate,” he says. “That is the only way that we can be assured that we can move forward.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate