Federal student loans often have wording in the contracts that makes them very difficult to include in a bankruptcy case. As such, student debt is hard, but not impossible, to have dismissed during bankruptcy. To convince a judge to include Federal student loans in your case, the student loan borrower has to prove the loans “will impose an undue hardship on you and your dependents.” Quite often, the judge will conduct the Brunner test to see if the student loan bankruptcy case should move forward. This includes determining whether: The debtor cannot maintain a minimal standard of living — based on current income and expenses — for the debtor and the debtor’s dependents if forced to repay the student loans. Additional circumstances exist indicating that this state of affairs is likely to persist for a significant portion of the repayment period of the student loans. The debtor has made good faith efforts to repay the loans. This also works with a private student loan or other qualified education loans, which in recent years has adopted similar contract wording to avoid dismissal in bankruptcy proceedings.