Post Bankruptcy Student Loan repayment – Collection Agency
My trustee was discharged earlier this year, and in June my bank who has held my student loans contacted me to commence repayment. I was presented with my options for getting the loans back into good standing, paid the interest for my provincial loan and made three consecutive monthly payments against my Federal loan. Imagine my surprise, when two weeks ago I received a call, and then a letter from a collection agency indicating my student loan was with their office. Apparently the guaranteed portion has been sent from HRDC – but I had never received any information from HRDC indicating that they held a portion of my student loans. Is this legal? Can student loan debt be transferred to a collection agency without you being contacted first to attempt to make repayment?
Posted from: Ontario
Unfortunately, you’ve found yet another of the pitfalls associated with student loans. When you made arrangements to deal with the bank portion of the loans some one could have (should have) asked you about the government portion. They weren’t obliged to do so and apparently in your case they didn’t.
HRDC has the same rights to try and collect on their portion of the debt that the banks had – if you failed to make the payments (even though you didn’t know there were payments to make) they have the right to refer your file to a collection agency or even to take legal action.
Sorry, they’ve done nothing illegal – it may be morally questionable, but they’re within their rights to do what they’ve done.