Student loan treatment in divorce

A question about : Student loan treatment in divorce

Hi, I have a student loan and I am getting divorced. She and I have no assets to share out, only debts. Our credit card debts are weighted towards her, but my student loan makes the sums roughly equal. I want my student loan to be considered, whereas she does not.

In mediation and from my solicitor, all I have had so far is, it's treated differently from credit card debt. No one seems to know how it is treated differently. Does any one have a similar experience wrt a student loan to share?

For your information, I took the loan out for a PGCE in 2010-11.

Best answers:

• I don't have personal experience of a student loan in divorce, but plenty of difficult divorce experience and a large student loan!
  It is different to 'normal' debt because repayments are at a minimum and are not required if you don't earn a certain amount (this includes if you drop down to earning nothing as a result of redundancy or illness). If you took out Ј10k of loan with a bank or put the same amount on a credit card the repayment conditions would be very different to those of a student loan. It's kind of like trying to say a 25 year mortgage is the same as putting your house purchase on a credit card. It's just not the same!
  Presumably, if you have only been in teaching a few years, you have very little pension to speak of? So she will have little/no claim on that. And you are therefore the only person benefitting from the PGCE?
  You mention credit card debt - what were the cards used for? is it for items only your ex would benefit from or does it consist of holidays, home improvements, that kind of thing?
• The difference is, as clearing out says, that the student loan is a 'softer' loan and may not have to be paid back at all. Are you earning enough to start paying it back, yet?
  Equally, if the credit card debt was built up while you were together then the starting point is likely to be an assumption that the debt was built up for your joint benefit - both of you went on the holidays / ate the food / hasd use of the car or whether which was paid for on the cards.
  What is the interest rate on it, compared to the rate on the credit card debts?
  I would not expect it to be totally ignored but it would not be fair to treat it as being equal to the other debts.