Consumer complaint received 2022-08-11
Product: Student loan — Private student loan
Issue: Dealing with your lender or servicer — Received bad information about your loan
Company: Navient Solutions, LLC. (GA)

My two private student loans were originally taken through Sallie Mae, and were later assumed by Navient. For both loans, my mother was a guarantor/cosigner. I have paid these loans religiously every month since I graduated in XXXX. In fact, for the vast majority of this time, my loans were set up on autopay and paid automatically every month. I never applied for any alternative repayment plan or forbearance. My husband and I filed a joint XXXX XXXX  bankruptcy in XX/XX/XXXX. As I was told student loans are not discharged in bankruptcy, I continued to pay my loans every month, during my bankruptcy and after. In XX/XX/XXXX, my autopay did not draft and I received a notice from XXXX XXXX that my accounts were paid off. I immediately contacted Navient and was told that due to settlement of a class action lawsuit against Navient, my loans should have been discharged in my bankruptcy in XXXX and have now been written off and I no longer owe Navient anything. In XX/XX/XXXX, my mother received an email that she had a new payment due to Navient. I again contacted Navient and was then told that the loans were transferred to my mother because I am no longer legally responsible for repayment. I explained that they told me the loans were written off, not that they were going to go after my XXXX mother for the balance. After some research, I found several complaints about Navient offering a cosigner release form where loans qualify for a cosigner release after 12 months of on time payments from the primary borrower, a good credit score, and other requirements. Neither Sallie Mae nor Navient ever disclosed to me over the course of 12 years of on-time payments that a cosigner release was even an option, let alone that I qualified for it as far back as XXXX. Additionally, this information is conveniently not able to be located anywhere on Navient 's website, even in the borrow information section. You can only find this elusive information on Navient 's site by Googling " Navient cosigner release ''. Mine is one of many complaints about Navient 's deceptive practices and failures to disclose. Had I known my mother could be released as a cosigner, I obviously would have applied for such, like any prudent person would. I submitted the cosigner release request in XX/XX/XXXX and was denied on the basis that I " do not have any active loans with Navient ''. So because Navient arbitrarily closed my account without notice, transferred loans to my cosigner without notice, and failed to ever disclose over the course of 12 years of on time payments that the cosigner could have been released, these loans are now in my mother 's name and I continue to pay them by check every month because I can no longer access them online. Had my mother been released as a cosigner at anytime between the time I qualified for a cosigner release in XXXX and the filing of my bankruptcy in XXXX, the balance of these loans would have been written off and my mother would not be saddled with student loans at retirement. To make matters even worse, as I've continued to pay these loans every month via check, Navient has cashed every check, but today reported to the credit bureaus on both my credit and my mother 's that the accounts are 60 days past due and in default, which is no where near true. I have paid back well more than my original loan amount, and Navient has made plenty of money off of me these last 12 years. Navient had a duty to inform of the potential of a cosigner release and the process for such and they failed to do so. Had Navient properly disclosed the cosigner release process, my cosigner would have been released from the loans well before my bankruptcy, and my loans would have been properly discharged due to my bankruptcy. Navient is using their failure to disclose their policies as a backend way around bankruptcies to continue to collect from discharged borrowers because most prudent people aren't going to allow their retired parents to become saddled with their education loans.