Jamie Mudd v. U.S. Department of Education: A Nebraska bankruptcy court discharges a grandmother's student loans

 Between 2006 and 2015, Jamie Mudd took out 41 student loans to attend Heald College, a for-profit institution, and San Joaquin Delta College, a public institution. In 2015, she rolled these loans into two consolidated federal loans, totally about $72,000. 

Mudd put her student loans into an income-based repayment plan (IBRP) that established her monthly payments at zero due to her low income.  Under this plan, she was obligated to certify her income on an annual basis. Evidently, she forgot to do this because the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) removed her from the IBRP and reset her monthly payments at almost $800 per month. 

Mudd was readmitted into an IBRP, but she again failed to certify her income, and DOE set her new monthly payment at $963.

According to Bankruptcy Judge Shon Hastings, Mudd never earned more than $13 an hour, and she often worked two jobs to make ends meet. She lived in a one-bedroom apartment and incurred regular expenses caring for a grandson with disabilities. She also suffered from significant health problems.

Ms. Mudd filed an adversary proceeding, hoping to discharge her student loans, but DOE objected. First, DOE said Mudd's financial circumstances would probably improve, enabling her to make modest payments in an IBRP.  Second, Mudd was a smoker, and DOE said she should save her cigarette money and use it to pay down her student loans. DOE also claimed that Mudd's expenses for her grandson's video streaming were unnecessary.  Indeed, DOE disapproved of any money Mudd spent on her grandson.

Fortunately, Bankruptcy Judge Shon Hastings was considerably more compassionate than DOE. In a decision issued last month, Judge Hastings discharged all of Mudd's student-loan debt.

In ruling in Mudd's favor, Judge Hastings applied the "totality of circumstances" test approved by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is a summary of his reasoning:

Mudd has made a good faith effort to maximize her income. Mudd works approximately 53 hours per week at two jobs. . . . Overall, Mudd's expenses are necessary and reasonable and consistent with a minimal standard of living. . . . She has no savings, owns no assets of significant value (except her used car in which she holds no equity), lives in a one-bedroom apartment and obtains food and toiletries from local nonprofit organizations to make ends met. Her medical expenses are higher than budgeted, and she anticipates that her health care costs will continue to rise due to her high cholesterol and diabetes.  

In short, Judge Hastings concluded, Mudd did not have sufficient disposable income to pay on her student loans. Thus, the judge discharged all of this debt.

Judge Hastings specifically rejected DOE's suggestion that Mudd should not be credited for the expenses she incurred for her grandson. "[T]he Court finds it entirely inappropriate to find or suggest that Mudd should not care for her grandson or to weigh undue burden factors against her for doing so." 

Judge Hasting's ruling should not surprise us. Clearly, Jamie Mudd was in dire financial straits and entitled to discharge her student loans in bankruptcy.

What is shocking is the fact that DOE objected. Mudd v. U.S. Department of Education is just one more example of the federal government's heartlessness toward college-loan debtors, heartlessness that borders on viciousness

References

Mudd v. U.S. Department of Education, Adversary No. 19-04048, 2020 WL 7330054 (Bank. D. Neb. Dec. 9, 2020).

Leary v. Great Lakes Educational Loan Services: New York Bankruptcy judge slaps student-loan servicer with a $378,000 contempt sanction

In September 2020, Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glen slapped a huge contempt penalty on Great Lakes Educational Loan Servicers--$378,629.62! Why? Because Great Lakes repeatedly refused to comply with Judge Glen's directives in a student-loan bankruptcy case.

Leary v. Great Lakes Educational Loan Servicers: The facts

In 2015, Sheldon Leary filed an adversary action in a New York bankruptcy court, seeking to discharge over $350,000 in student-loan debt. He amassed this debt to pay for his three children's college education.

Mr. Leary represented himself and properly served Great Lakes, his student-loan servicer. He didn't know, however, that he needed to sue the U.S. Department of Education as well. Great Lakes passed Mr. Leary's complaint on to DOE, but neither DOE nor Great Lakes answered Mr. Leary's lawsuit. In fact, Great Lakes forwarded fifteen pleadings to DOE, but neither DOE nor Great Lakes made an appearance in Judge Martin's court for quite some time.

In 2016, Mr. Leary obtained a default judgment against Great Lakes for failing to respond to his lawsuit, and Judge Glen discharged Leary's student-loan debt. DOE ignored this judgment and sent Mr. Leary two letters threatening to garnish his wages.

More than four years after filing his lawsuit, Leary moved to reopen his adversary proceeding and asked Judge Glen to find Great Lakes in contempt. Great Lakes still did not respond, and on April 29, 2020, Judge Glen held the loan servicer in contempt and assessed sanctions against it for $123,000.

Great Lakes did not pay this assessment, and Judge Glen held a second contempt hearing last August. At this hearing, Great Lakes made several arguments to avoid sanctions. First, it argued that it could not be held in contempt because it had not acted in bad faith. Judge Glen rejected this defense. Whether or not Great Lakes had acted in bad faith, the judge reasoned, it had ignored "clear and unambiguous" court orders and had not diligently tried to comply with them.

Great Lakes also argued that it transferred its loan processing job to another collection agent after Mr. Leary's lawsuit was filed, thus relieving itself of the obligation to respond to court pleadings. But that fact, the judge ruled, did not excuse Great Lakes from its duty to comply with court orders in Mr. Leary's lawsuit.

Finally, Great Lakes argued that sanctions were not warranted because Great Lake’s noncompliance had no impact on Leary’s litigation costs or his indebtedness. 

But Judge Glen didn't buy that argument either. In fact, he pointed out, Great Lakes' inaction had significantly injured Mr. Leary by causing him to suffer "aggravation, pain and suffering, negative credit ratings, loss of sleep, worry and marital strain."

Judge Glen:  Great Lakes was "grossly negligent"

In short, Judge Glen ruled, Great Lakes' inaction had been "grossly negligent" and "really much worse." As for Great Lakes' claim that its legal department was unaware that it was a named party in Mr. Leary's lawsuit, the judge found this argument "unbelievabl[e]."

The judge ordered Great Lakes to pay most of its sanction to DOE, in an amount sufficient to pay off Mr. Leary's student-loan obligations. Thus, in the end, Leary got the relief he sought in 2015.

Judge Glen did not find it necessary to hold DOE in contempt, but he did not find the agency blameless. As he noted in a footnote:

It should not be lost on anyone . . . that DOE's inaction with respect to Mr. Leary--especially when DOE had knowledge at multiple steps along the way that Great Lakes was ignoring its obligations to Mr. Leary as a named defendant in the adversary proceeding--is disappointing to say the least.

Judge Glen finds DOE’s conduct “highly questionable”

Judge Glen's decision fingered Great Lakes as the bad guy in the Leary case, but he found DOE's conduct to be "highly questionable." Obviously, DOE's lawyers knew what Great Lakes was doing and made no objection. It is hard to escape the conclusion that DOE deliberately allowed Great Lakes to flout Judge Glen's orders in order to sabotage Mr. Leary's attempt to discharge his student loans in bankruptcy.

References

Leary v. Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, 620 B.R. 39 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y 2020).

Pro quarterback Tom Brady gets $1 million in PPE money plus tax break, but no tax breaks for distressed student loan debtors

 According to CNBC, Tom Brady, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' highly-paid quarterback, got a check for $960,00 from the Smal Business Administration's Payroll Protection Plan. Why? Because, besides playing football, Mr. Brady owns a sports and nutrition company.

Does Mr. Brady need the money? Earlier this year, he signed a $50 million two-year deal to play football for the Buccaneers.

And Mr. Brady gets a tax break that goes with that $960,000 check.  Brady and everyone who received a PPP check can deduct their business expenses for the year, even if they paid those expenses with the federal government's free money.

Is this a great country or what!

Meanwhile, nine million student-loan debtors who are enrolled in long-term income-based repayment plans (IBRPs) have enormous tax bills hanging over their heads.  

IBRPs allow college-loan borrowers to make monthly payments on their loans based on their income. If they make regular payments for 20 or 25 years, the balance on their loans is forgiven. However, the amount of forgiveness is considered taxable income by the IRS.

I do not quarrel with Congress's COVID-relief legislation. Perhaps it is good public policy to give Tom Brady a million bucks while my relatives get a lousy $600.

I just hope my children and grandchildren will become rich enough someday to qualify for government handouts.

Every Person in Debt Deserves to Be Treated With Dignity, essay by Steve Rhode

 Written by Steve Rhode

 Originally published at Get Out of Debt Guy

We assume that it is wrong not to treat others with kindness in all corners of life. For example, in the U.S., we no longer have separate entrances based on your skin color. Buildings make allowances for physical limitations, and a recent news story said that more people had developed a tolerance for others’ religion.

But we could make some advances in learning to treat people in debt with dignity. I’d have to say that currently, society treats debtors as losers and if debtors were on a ledge getting ready to leap, a crowd below would be yelling “Jump!”

The majority of people without financial problems love a little debtor voyeurism and witness others’ financial misery. It’s like watching the train wreck through cracks in your fingers as you hold your hand over your eyes. You don’t want to watch, but you do.

Imagine if suicide was like debt, and when you were contemplating killing yourself, your creditors kept calling you and say things like “you are a loser” or “just do it and good riddance”? That’s some pretty cruel mojo. Maybe we should call the overweight kid that is depressed and yell, “fatty, fatty” into the phone. Now that is some intense and insensitive cruelty.

Why is it when people are in financial trouble that we can’t wrap our arms around them and treat them with care, compassion, and respect? We should. We all should.

If you’ve never been deep in debt and afraid, unable to sleep, on the verge of an anxiety attack, and depressed, it might be hard for you to imagine what life is like during those dark days of debt. While some might put on a mask, most people are ashamed, unhappy, and afraid inside.

Being in debt is modern-day leprosy.

When you can’t spend money as you used to, and people don’t seem to be around as much, your life changes in a way that you perceive to be for the worse and when you’ve got to move because you can’t afford the rent, it’s like being hustled off to the leper colony. You’re now isolated for all the wrong reasons.

I can’t think of any time that I’ve ever seen someone post a sign in their front yard that says, “Hi Y’all, we’re so broke we can’t afford to live here anymore, and we are getting kicked out.” Actually, what I’ve seen more of are foreclosed homes with everything left behind, including wedding pictures and the belongings of evicted people left by the side of the road for passerby’s to pick through. Ashamed people flee.

Debtors deserve dignity. I’m not saying that we need to give anyone a free ride in life. I’m just saying that people in debt are wounded and deserve to be treated as you would anyone in a difficult time or a fragile moment.

Being in debt is a mathematical position with emotional manifestations. Being unable to pay your bills is not a casual reality for most debtors. People in debt want to pay their bills, they do, but they can’t see a way, or they are not emotionally ready to make those hard lifestyle changes to meet their new obligations.

Being unready or unprepared to make changes to get the numbers to line up does not make you a bad person. It just makes you someone that, for some reason, is unwilling to make some difficult choices right then.

Being in debt is about managing depression, despair, and loneliness. I’m not saying that all debtors feel that way, but most do. Being in debt is about a loss of self-esteem and self-confidence. It’s about being unable to make a plan, stick to it, and make it happen.

The emotional pain of being in debt robs us of our own dignity. The rest of society does almost nothing to help cradle the debtor with love and compassion to soften the blow and ease the journey.

Debtors are losers. Debtors are rejects. Debtors are liars. Debtors are a failure. And all of those statements are uttered every day by people, and none of them are true. Instead, they are like the insensitive bully’s schoolyard shouts that leave scars for life on fragile minds.

Debtors do have a duty to find a solution to make the pain and misery through change. But that can be like asking someone with a bad back to run a marathon.

Being in debt is a thing, but being a debtor is personal, and debtors deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion while helping towards a solution.

Doing something nice today, give a debtor a hug.

Steve Rhode is the Get Out of Debt Guy and has been helping good people with bad debt problems since 1994. You can learn more about Steve, here.  You can read this essay on Mr. Rhode's web site at https://getoutofdebt.org/21762/debt-with-dignity.

Say goodbye to your golden years: 100 million Americans have no retirement savings

According to the  National Insitute on Retirement Security, more than 100 million Americans have no retirement savings whatsoever. 

As Diane Oakley, NIRS executive director, observed:

The facts and data are clear. Retirement is in peril for most working-class Americans . . . When all working individuals are considered--not just the minority with retirement accounts--the typical working American has zero, zilch, nothing saved for retirement.

The NIRS partly blamed the 2007 recession for the bad news. But the report was issued in 2018--before the coronavirus put millions of people out of work.  Over the past year, Americans have dipped into their savings and their retirement accounts just to pay today's bills.

 A 2019 survey also reported bad news for American retirees. A GobankingRanks survey concluded that almost two out of three Americans (64 percent) will retire broke. And--shockingly--nearly half of the people surveyed said they'd didn't care!

Clearly, millions of Americans are not preparing for their retirement years. Many workers don't make enough money to fund a retirement account, and others are overwhelmed with consumer debt--home mortgages, car payments, and credit card bills.

And student-loan debt is a significant contributor to Americans' precarious financial status. More than 40 million people have outstanding student debt, and less than half that number are paying it off. Nine million student-loan debtors are in long-term income-based repayment plans, which means they will never pay down their loan balances.

What is going to happen to all these impecunious Americans when they reach retirement age?

A great many will just keep working until they die or become too incapacitated to be a Walmart greeter. Others will tap the equity in their homes or draw down their meager savings just to pay their utility bills. Some will move in with their kids--who will have their own financial troubles.

As a recent New Yorker article noted, there is a growing movement to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. I hope Congress does exactly that.

Nevertheless, even if the minimum wage is roughly doubled, elderly Americans who work full-time at Wendy's for $15 an hour will generate just enough income to keep them above the poverty line.

Working on their feet for eight hours a day will be difficult for people in their seventies.  Many will have to pop Chinese-manufactured Advils to keep their arthritis under control.  But it can be done.

But the days when Americans referred to retirement as the Golden Years are over.  For many Americans, their last years will not be golden. They will be difficult, bitter, and depressing.

photo credit: finance.yahoo.com

Post-Modern America is as vicious and dysfunctional as Victorian England, the Weimar Republic, and 17th century France

If you get your news from network television, you are being bombarded by commercials about prescription medicines and financial services. 

These ads typically show prosperous older Americans who look remarkably fit, live in lovely homes, and spend their days cooking gourmet meals, wind-surfing, and flyfishing with their adorable grandchildren.

These advertisements purport to show life in 21st century America--the best of all possible worlds where everyone is healthy, happy, and financially secure.

But I don't live in that America, and you don't either. Instead, most of us live in a society that is remarkably similar to dysfunctional regimes of bygone centuries.

Our government is printing money at a frightening pace to prop up the financial markets, much like the Weimar Republic did in the 1920s. And we know how that turned out. Germany experienced runaway inflation that set the stage for Adolph Hitler.

We may celebrate the fact that the United States abolished debtors' prisons, but 21st century America treats debtors much the way England treated them in the Victorian age. 

We don't deport debtors to Australia or put them in jail as England did in Charles Dickens' time, but we've created a virtual prison for student-loan borrowers, millions of whom are trapped in income-based repayment plans that last 25 years. Compounding student-debtors' misery, our supposedly benevolent Congress has made it almost impossible for insolvent student-loan debtors to get relief in the bankruptcy courts.

And the American tax system is remarkably like the tax regime in Louis XIV's France. W.H. Lewis, who wrote a masterful social history of seventeenth-century France, described the French tax structure this way;

[T]he whole fiscal system was in itself radically and incurably vicious; as a contemporary remarks, if he Devil himself had been given a free hand to plan the ruin of France, he could not have invented any scheme more likely to achieve that object than the system of taxation in vogue, a system which would seem to have been designed with the sole object of ensuring a minimum return to the King at a maximum price to his subjects, with the heaviest share falling on the poorest section of the population.

Doesn't that sound like the American tax system? Sure it does. As financial tycoon Warren Buffett has repeatedly observed, he pays federal taxes at a lower rate than his secretary.

And the COVID pandemic didn't change the system at all. Indeed, the latest coronavirus relief package includes 100 percent deductibility for the so-called "three-martini lunch." Think about it: wealthy Americans can write off extravagant meals that can cost more than $1,000, while the working stiff gets a $600 coronavirus-relief check.

 In short, although Americans may deceive themselves into believing that our society is evolving into a paradise based on the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion, in fact, we live in a world not so very different from Victorian England, Weimar Germany, and 17th century France.

Louis XIV: Is everybody happy?

Happy New Year! Your middle-class status has been revoked and a college degree will not get you reinstated

 As 2020 comes to a close, you may think 2021 will be a better year. And if you are among the nation's wealthiest Americans, things look pretty rosy.

But if you are a middle-class person, next year will be worse for you than 2020.

First of all, as Charles Hugh Smith pointed out in a recent online essay, the middle class is an illusion. If you think you are in the middle class, you have been deceived. In fact, you are in a "phantom middle class," a class of permanent debtors.  

Over the past 40 years, earnings for the top one-tenth of one percent of Americans has grown 15 times faster than income for the bottom 90 percent.  Wages as a share of the national economy have been going down for the last half-century. 

You know that because you saw how wages went up for your parents' generation, but are not going up for working people today. 

Or as Mr. Smith put it: 

If the top 10% own 90% of the wealth and has captured virtually all the income gains of the past 20 years, then isn't it obvious America has no middle class? What the traditional middle middle class . . . owns is debt . . . .

Nowhere is this more obvious than when we look at the massive debt that gullible Americans have taken on to get a college degree in the pathetic hope that a diploma would get them into the middle class or keep them from falling out of it.

As Mr. Smith pointed out, Americans are burdened by "$I.7 trillion in student loan debt burdening those who bought the narrative that a college diploma was a passport to the security of the middle class. The debt load carried by those clinging on to aspirations of middle-class security is staggering."

Indeed, "burdening powerless students with uncertain futures with trillions in high-interest debt would have been viewed as criminal two generations ago, but now it's celebrated by those reaping interest from precarious debt-serfs."

The poor saps who have been plunged into poverty by their student loans cannot discharge their debt in bankruptcy courts, and they got nothing but crumbs from Congress's so-called coronavirus relief legislation.

College presidents--most of whom make more than half-million dollars a year, whined to their legislators about how much the pandemic was costing them, and Congress bailed them out. But did even one of these charlatan bozos urge some relief for their ex-students who are groaning under the burden of student loans they can never repay? No, they did not.

If Americans graduated from colleges and graduate schools with useful skills, they would earn enough to pay off their student loans quickly--within 10 years at least. But they are not acquiring practical skills--especially if they majored in the liberal arts or the social sciences.  

Again, Mr. Smith:

As for possessing skills, much of the workforce has few producer skills, as the consumer economy devotes inordinate attention not to producing but to marketing, speculation and complying with counterproductive regulations and bureaucratic file-shuffling.

But our fun-house economy cannot continue indefinitely with the superwealthy exploiting the rest of us while the government prints money and runs up the national debt--now pushing $28 trillion. As Smith observed:

Once the con of printing trillions of dollars out of thin air dissolves and the nation has to balance its books in the real world, these file-shuffling and speculative skills will no longer generate meaningful income.

Those of us in the bottom 90 percent of the nation's earners can do very little to stop the downward spiral in our wealth and income.  But at least we can advise our children not to take out student loans to get worthless college degrees, useless MBAs, obscenely expensive law diplomas, and meaningless doctorates.

Does Harvard President Larry Bacow have anything to say about student debt?