Death/divorce and student loans

[gixxa]

I live in DC and my fiance lives in Virginia. I have paid off all of my student debt, but he still has over $100k of student loans to pay off. If he dies or we get divorced before the debt is paid off, would I be held responsible for the debt? Would it matter if we were living in Virginia v. DC?

[ecmst12]

Regardless of where you live, it's his debt that he incurred before the marriage and will remain his debt during the marriage or in case of divorce or death. You will not ever be responsible for debts he accrued before you got married. If he dies, they will be owed by his estate and will have to be paid out of his assets (if any). If there are no assets or not enough to pay the debt, then the debt goes away. This is the ONLY way that I'm aware of that one could "get out" of paying student loan debt.

[gixxa]

So if we bought a house together, his portion of it could be collected upon death/divorce?

[LdiJ]

Originally Posted by gixxa

So if we bought a house together, his portion of it could be collected upon death/divorce?

Not necessarily. When a married couple buys a house it is normally titled as joint tenancy with rights of survivorship, and passes outside of any estate.

[Golfball]

Originally Posted by ecmst12

Regardless of where you live, it's his debt that he incurred before the marriage and will remain his debt during the marriage or in case of divorce or death. You will not ever be responsible for debts he accrued before you got married. If he dies, they will be owed by his estate and will have to be paid out of his assets (if any). If there are no assets or not enough to pay the debt, then the debt goes away. This is the ONLY way that I'm aware of that one could "get out" of paying student loan debt.

Actually, at least for Stafford loans, death of the borrower results in an automatic forgiveness of the (Stafford) student loans.

Permanent disability may also result in loan forgiveness.

From what I've heard (and as such, have not verified), there are some programs that will also forgive/pay off student loans. However, these programs are very narrow, and are somewhat onerous. (For example, get an education degree and teach under the auspices of the Alaska school system in the Alaskan wildnerness for 5 years.)