How do you handle student loans during divorce?

You may be trying to figure out student loans because you are going through divorce. Divorce can obviously be either kind of a happy recovering time in life, or it can be a sad time in life. According to the College Investor, student loans and having student loans certainly can make that more complicated. So here are a couple of things to think about.

If you were filing separately for taxes because you were married and maybe married to somebody who did not have student loan debt, it might make sense to switch repayment strategies. You could go from, say, income based repayment, if you were not eligible for Pay As You Earn, to Revised Pay As You Earn. You can potentially go from paying fifteen percent of your income to paying ten percent of your income. That is one thing to consider. There are other legal ramifications to consider as well.

Typically, when you pay down student loan debt for your spouse, you may not receive any kind of remedy for that in terms of division of assets. If you have student loan debt in general, your spouse is not responsible for it. Now that might be different if that spouse is co-signed, but if you do not have any co-signed situations set up, then the student loan debt is going to stay with you. In terms of trying to figure out what the next step should be, you may need six months of expenses in the bank. So, if you are not already there, you definitely want to get there first. Another factor to consider is if you are going to get married again in the future, then you want to be cognizant of getting legally married versus spiritually married. Because if you get legally married, that has implications for your student loan repayment.