[MRDALEK]

In August of last year, after having filed for bankruptcy, my mother attempted to see if she could get a hardship discharge for her student loans, which totaled in at about $45000. Well, they denied the discharge but the Department of Education offered up their own offer.
Their offer was that if my mother agreed to have a judgment entered against her for $50000 ($5k more than she really owed) then they would agree to do an annual review of her personal finances including her income AND debts, and if she wasn't in a "significantly improved" state of finances then they would not attempt any collection, and do the same thing year after year. The judgment specifically spells all this stuff out! There is no "wiggle" room for them.

She is in no better state of finances now then she was then, possibly worse due in part to me, because I have been unable to work due to a fungal infection on my retina.

But the problem now is that here it is, August of the next year, and mid-July she got a letter from them stating that they would begin debiting her checking account as of August 8th. She called them and they deny that there is any judgement and that she just had a forebarence! Which is an outright lie! At least she managed to cancel her automatic payments so they have to send her a bill, but she's terrified they're going to garnish her wages or something and she has no idea what to do.

They are blatently breaking their own judgment conditions. What can we do? Her bankruptcy lawyer wants no part of it, stating "no one enforces anything against the government" !! He didn't mention that when he helped her broker the agreement.

The judgment is real, it is entered in the official records in the KY bankruptcy court, we went and looked just to be sure.

On the bright side we managed to get the attention of our US Representative but their process is like molasses.

[seniorjudge]

The judgment is real, it is entered in the official records in the KY bankruptcy court, we went and looked just to be sure.


What you describe does not happen in bankruptcy court.

Check your facts again.

[MRDALEK]

What you describe does not happen in bankruptcy court.

Check your facts again.

Actually it does happen in bankruptcy court. You can view her case for yourself, it's public record.

This is where we went to make sure it was indeed on file:

US Bankruptcy Court
Suite 200
100 E. Vine St.
Lexington, KY 40507

[Mr. Knowitall]

From what you write, I see her choices as (a) convincing her lawyer to help her, or finding another lawyer who will, (b) attempting to enforce the judgment on her own without legal help, or (c) paying the debt.

[MRDALEK]

Yeah, that's the problem how would we go about enforcing it? Paying it, just isn't an option right now, they want $600 a month and she could probably manage $50 max.
It's just one of those situations where she doesn't even know what the next step is. I think our best bet probably is trying to get a better lawyer but until I can come up with the consult fee that's not happening either.

Would it do any good to try and contact the judge who signed off on the judgment? It seems like the hardest thing is just getting anyone to listen to us. She isn't asking for the debt to disappear but just for them to abide by their own agreement.
She's been so stressed out lately that I'm afraid she's going to have a heart attack or something and I just feel helpless, I can't return to my past work (truck driving) due to my eyes and I can't get any other jobs because of how often I have to miss work to see the doctor and because of my diminished vision they think I'm too high of an accident risk. But of course I'm not "blind enough" for disability, so I have horrible medical bills piling up myself.

The only other hope is that she has applied for a few federal jobs that if she got them, they'd pay almost twice her current wage, at which point she'd just pay the debt.

[Mr. Knowitall]

To enforce a judgment, yes, you have to go back to court. It can help a lot to get assistance from a lawyer.