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Getting around the Right wing
Kay W.
December 27, 2025
As I think is clear, I am one of the tens of millions of Americans who believe this country is in serious trouble. I think we will need lots and lots of new approaches, new ideas, and new people. I’m not talking about “Green Lanternism” or “one neat trick” that traditionalists sneer at - I mean hundreds of new ideas and new approaches. Thus, I have been actively seek out people and institutions who know we’re in trouble and are getting creative on ways to save other people from our fascist government.
If you know anything about personal bankruptcy law (and I do) this is pretty amazing:
Student loans have long been perceived as impossible to cast off in bankruptcy. Few borrowers dare to even try.
To do so, borrowers must file a separate lawsuit, enduring a costly, stressful process that came with no guarantees. In some parts of the country, they had to prove that their financial lives were “hopeless” before a judge would be willing to wipe their student debts away.
But a recent analysis has uncovered a significant shift: The vast majority of student debtors who seek discharges in bankruptcy are getting them, in large part because of a simpler legal process that was introduced three years ago.
Borrowers have an 87 percent success rate in dismissing most or all of their loans in bankruptcy, according to the study by Jason Iuliano, a professor at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. That is up from 61 percent in 2017 and more than than double the rate nearly two decades ago.
Though success rates had slowly improved over previous years, the latest increase can be largely attributed to a Biden-era change adopted by the Justice and Education Departments, which provided clearer guidelines on what types of cases would result in a loan dismissal. It also enabled borrowers to present their cases on a simplified 15-page attestation form.
Student loans aren’t discharged in bankruptcy as easily as other consumer loans, like credit cards or medical debt. Debtors need to file a separate lawsuit, known as an adversary proceeding, which many lawyers haven’t been inclined to take on.
The three-year-old process has tried to streamline all of that. And the recent analysis indicates — at least for roughly 650 completed cases filed from mid-October 2022 through mid-November 2023 — it has been working.
The high falutin idea behind US bankruptcy policy was (actually) pro free markets. Americans (unlike, say, Olde English law with debtors prisons and Dickensian serfs) would be able to get a “fresh start” if they took a risk to borrow to get an education or start a business. That encourages personal growth, risk-taking and innovation. Of course, like all great and noble ideas, this was subverted and turned on its head by MBAs and finance industry people, who decided only lenders and people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk should have government backstops against loss.
But now people like this can enter a federal court and try to get some relief:
the majority of student debtors were women. The typical borrower was 47 years old and owed $115,000 in student loans, with her expenses exceeding her income by $200 each month.
Makes me want to start a little bankruptcy practice! I would completely enjoy discharging student loan debt.
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