Post Bankruptcy — Don’t Just Pay
We received this inquiry today from a fellow bankruptcy attorney:
I have a client who had a Chapter 13, which due to it being a 100% plan, ended off paying off the Proof of Claim Amount at 100% in the bankruptcy.
Years later, (Insert Private Student Loan Company Here) is coming back after her arguing that during the bankruptcy, interest continued to accrue, and now she owes $3,700 in interest. In the Chapter 13 Trustee’s Final Account they paid the POC principal PLUS interest.
I’m going to reach out to Navient, but wanted to see if you had any insight or experience in dealing with this.
My response: Don’t Pay. File a motion for discharge violation after one call or letter (preferred because we can attach the copy) across the bow that the private student loan creditor will ignore in our experience. We have a template we like to use (and share) and it also forms the basis of our discharge violation motion which comes next. This creditor was paid in full with interest during the plan. If they didn’t agree for some reason, they had an opportunity to address this in the bankruptcy case but failed to do so. Just making collection calls or sending collection letters years later trying to make the debtor pay is not legal in most cases.
