Opinion ID: 769836
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Regner

Text: 37 St. Rose insists that it extended credit to Regner because Regner agreed, in response to the college's demands, that he owed it money. However, the parties did not agree, prior to or contemporaneous with Regner's college attendance that the college would provide him with educational services and that he would pay for these later. Instead, they only agreed after the fact that Regner owed tuition. St. Rose asserts that Regner owes tuition for the fall 1993 semester. Unfortunately for the college, it relies entirely on Regner's letter of September 28, 1994, acknowledging his past due account and promising to pay the college in installments, and his stipulation of September 17, 1997 to the bankruptcy court acknowledging that he had attended college without paying tuition. Both of these documents were executed well after the end of the fall 1993 semester, as was the November 10, 1994 stipulation Regner made in state court. 38 Thus, when Regner's tuition fell due and was not paid like Renshaw's, it simply became a past due account. It was not thereby transformed into a loan. The district court in Regner correctly concluded that the proof showed neither an exchange of funds nor an agreement between St. Rose and Regner for any extension of credit. The student did not execute a promissory note. The college simply acquiesced when Renshaw failed to prepay his tuition, deciding apparently on its own that Renshaw's tuition would be paid by financial aid or that the student would be responsible to pay himself. See Regner, 229 B.R. at 272; cf. In re Alibatya, 178 B.R. 335, 339 (Bankr. E.D.N.Y. 1995) (student who leased dormitory facilities from NYU under a housing license agreement without any contemplation, constructive or otherwise, to alter the lessor/lessee relationship should NYU choose not to terminate the license, did not transform the debt into a loan by defaulting on payment). We decline to adopt the reasoning of In re Stone, 180 B.R. 499 (Bankr. M.D. Tenn. 1995), which held that a promissory note signed after the student's withdrawal from the university created a loan. 39 As a consequence, because the exception to discharge of a debt in bankruptcy set out in § 523(a)(8) must be narrowly construed, with the burden of proof on the creditor colleges to prove the claims not dischargeable, we hold that the colleges in the two appeals before us failed to prove that the transactions between them and the debtors constituted educational loans excepted from discharge in bankruptcy.