Opinion ID: 2581730
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Student Loans

Text: The superior court orally found that although the student loans were incurred in the course and conduct of the marriage, they were deferred as long as Avis was a fulltime student. It orally found that the loans were more significantly traceable and allocated directly to Mrs. Lumpkin. The written findings and conclusions explained that [t]he benefits of these student loans to her and her education will accrue to her alone. Avis had submitted a pretrial memorandum and an affidavit asserting that Lindsay had supported her pursuit of higher education, and indicating that they had sometimes used the student loans to pay living expenses and non-educational debts. Lindsay offered no evidence to rebut Avis's sworn statements. The superior court's written findings acknowledged that Avis testified that a portion of the money from the student loans was used for family purposes, but found that the majority was used to benefit her own education. Given the evidence, we conclude that it was an abuse of discretion to treat the unpaid student loans incurred before separation as non-marital debt. They should have been treated as marital debt subject to division under AS 24.25.160(a). [13] We remand so the student loans can be reclassified as marital debt. Nor can we affirm on a theory that the student loans are marital debt that can be entirely allocated to Avis. We have never required either that student loan debt be treated as non-marital debt, or that the student-spouse pay the student loan debt regardless of the parties' economic position. To the contrary, in both Tybus v. Holland [14] and Notkin v. Notkin, [15] we held that the superior court did not abuse its discretion by allocating student loan debt to the non-student spouse. [16] Avis was very clearly economically disadvantaged, and her uncontroverted testimony was that she pursued her education as part of a family plan. The statutory factors outlined in AS 25.24.160(a)(4) do not justify such an inequitable division of this debt. [17] Absent any evidence that she incurred these debts as part of an agreement that she begin this education at her expense in anticipation of divorce, the timing of the loans and the circumstances made these debts subject to an equitable division. We conclude that it was an abuse of discretion to assign Avis full responsibility for the student loan debts incurred during marriage to further her education.