Our client, a college professor, contacted us initially about a private student loan that had defaulted over a decade ago. Her son initially obtained the loan but she was the co-signor. Thus, because co-signor are just as liable on defaulted student loans as the borrower, Access Group decided to pursue her instead of the son. Student loan agencies will do their due diligence if they believe that the co-signor has assets or property and the borrower does not which is the case in most situations where the borrower is the child and the co-signor is the parent. In this case that was the exact situation as the borrower child was in and out of work while the co-signor parent is a tenured professor.
The loan had been transferred over to Access Group by the time we began working on it. AES hired Regional Adjustment Bureau to collect on the loan that had allegedly grown to over $100,000. RAB is frequently hired by student loan companies to try and collect on defaulted student loans that are a bit seasoned. The clients were concerned that the debt was being reported on their credit report after years of non-reporting. One of the biggest concerns for our client was that her credit would be destroyed and that she would not be able to obtain a mortgage. After negotiations took place, we were able to negotiate a settlement arrangement of $25,000, or 75% off of the total amount of the debt. More importantly, we were able to have RAB agree to remove any and all trademarks regarding the defaulted loan off of the client's credit reports.