A friend of mine hasn't been paying his student loans off in years now and obviously his credit has suffered. This friend is convinced that if he waits out 7 years of the loan it is taken off his credit history, as far as I know he never filed for personal bankruptcy. I'm wondering how valid this is? Hoping to help my friend out as credit is everything now a days.
Thank you in advance.
As JoeTaxpayer rightly points out, student loan debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy (except for cases of extreme hardship) so that's out of the question.
The process your friend seems to think will work involves the statute of limitations which limits the time a creditor has to attempt collection of a debt. The general strategy (for lack of a better word) is to ignore the debt completely (what could go wrong) until that statute of limitations passes and the creditor is "time barred" from attempting collection. Once the debt is no longer collectible and has been written off you play the waiting game for the record to fall off your credit report.
There's no statute of limitations applicable to student loans so this process doesn't work.
Additionally, this process is difficult to pull off anyway as there are a number of ways that responding to a collection attempt on the debt will reset the timer on the statute of limitations.
3 things (that I know of) can get rid of student loan debt. Paying it off, getting a job that offers to make the payments, or dying.
Student loans are one of the few things that bankruptcy does not wipe out.
I don’t know who convinced him, but he is mistaken.
