I've done some more research on the net about how Dept of Ed can garnish wages for student loans w/out a court order. Found out that new regulations were adopted March 21, 2003 -- they actually have the pertinent federal register excerpts on the FSA website but from what I can tell they do have to notify you before they start garnishment, you have a right to inspect or copy any records they have related to the debt and to enter into a repayment agreement before they begin garnishing. You also have a right to have a hearing before garnishment and it says that they have the burden of proof. You also cannot be garnished if you were involuntarily separated from prior employment and have been employed in your new job for less than 12 months. I do not know how individual state law affects this but I make the assumption that federal law supersedes in this issue. -
Well, both they and NCO failed to do just that on demand for validation. I am not aware of anything that I can do to them for their failure to obey their own rules but NCO will rue the day they failed to abide by the law. Since the school I went to closed it's doors forever less than 90 days after I enrolled they are going to have one helluva time trying to collect the way I see it. On top of that they are going to have to figure out how to garnish a VA pension. Should be fun. That would almost never be a problem for them. Federal law would be the controlling factor is what I would tend to think. -
You're right, bbauer. I don't know what your recourse would be if they don't follow their own rules other than take it to federal court (?) Did you have a hearing? I'm interested to know if those hearings have any value or are they basically a sham. From what I read, they're supposed to have independent judges adminster the hearings but who knows what that means. Also remember these rules went into effect less than a month ago. I don't know what the rules were before.
One cannot hope to just go to court against the USDE for multiple reasons, not the least being that one must exhaust all of the available administrative remedies prior to filing suit. I'm no expert by a long shot, but I'd bet if you missed one little step the court would throw you out on your ear. (LOL). No, but before I get done with this mess of mine I may have to but I've tried to argue my defenses with them over and over and it just don't seem todo me no good. They always got some step or paper I have to get which can't be got for whatever reasson. Long story and probably not interesting to anybody but me. From what I read, they're supposed to have independent judges adminster the hearings but who knows what that means. [/quote]I don't know and for my case I really don't care. At least not at this point in time. What rules? Me either. The only rules I'm interested in if FDCPA and the only hearings I'm interested in is the one that will tell me how much money NCO is going to pay me. I figure that about the least ought to be $100,000 and if I actually do have to end up filing suit on them in U.S. Federal Court it's going to be more than that. I probably will have to end up filing at least 2 separate suits. On on the company and another on at least one of their employees. Don't know how many employees yet. So far there is only one I can sue but before it's over it may be more than that. And if they do decide to file a MSJ on me I may sue their lawyer too even if he is a government lawyer. Can't sue a government lawyer in his official capacity very well but I can sue him as a private person if he violates the law. That's what is happening in a few rare IRS cases. The people doing it aren't having a lot of luck filing suits on the IRS but they are having better luck filing suits on the individual IRS agents. More than one has ended up serving time as well after having been sued by private individuals. In this case I demanded validation of the old student loan from NCO and the government sent me a copy of the contracts I signed when I got the loan and then about 2 months later NCO sent me another copy of exactly the same thing. Of course by that time it was basically all over anyway. And then some dim bulb woman from NCO sent me a letter admitting that she broke the law so that gave me the grounds to sue her personally. I'll probably sue her first for the simple reason that she can't deny her guilt since she wrote it on NCO stationary and hand signed her name to it. So that should be a slam dunk and once that case is over that should give me a huge hammer to use on NCO since their guilt for at least that one violation would be pretty firmly established. Especially since she signed it as a manager of some sort. I kind of wish I had sent them my newest copy of validation because now I've found out how to give the estoppel even more validity by making a small addition to validation which lays the ground work for the estoppel and pretty well ties the two together. I've also added in two new traps to my validation letters too. That should help a lot in the future. Next thing I'd like to do is to set estoppel up so that the groundwork for the next letter is also established in estoppel. That really should not be all that hard to do once I put my mind to it and the last letter don't need any groundwork laid for it. I got a notice yesterday that somebody sent me a certified yesterday and I have to wait and go get it today. That might be from NCO for all I know so I'll have to see what that actually is. Might be something else entirely. One never knows till he gets it in his hand. They had Allied International on my butt first and as soon as they found out they had broken the law they threw up their hands and turned tail and run so I could not do anything to them. Then SL sent me a letter and said that they would give me a chance to pay them and I just ignored that so they sent it to NCO. I'd kind of like to see NCO try to wiggle out of this one by doing the same thing as Allied did because its far too late for them to get out of it now. They have broken quite a few laws. If they had thrown up their hands and sent it back to SL before the estoppel hit them or that dumb broad sent me her letter they could have done that but now it makes no difference what they do. I'm really not very worried about it because they can't sue and win in my case. I enrolled in a school and it closed it's doors forever prior to the 90 days allowed by SL. They have a rule that if the school closes within 90 days after you enroll you don't owe the debt so they are going to have to get around that first and then there is another problem in their path as well. I don't think they can get around that one either. It will be fun no matter what happens.
Re: new info re student loan garnis Just about everything they could do wrong. My list shows 8 violations before I ever got their demand letter. You never will find everything on this or any other forum. Not even close. Because they broke the law too. Several times. Again, a whole list of them. Even more than NCO did in the first few days of their collection efforts. NCO usually turns tail and runs but I guess this time they think that because they are collecting for DOE they have some kind of special power or other.
