Are you being sued or dunned on a private student loan allegedly held by National Collegiate Student Loan Trust? Until 2015, about 125 lawsuits per month were filed to collect National Collegiate Student Loan Trust (”NCT”) loans in Cook County alone, with more in other Illinois counties. Edelman Combs Latturner & Goodwin LLC defended a number of these cases. Most of those we have defended have been dismissed, with or without prejudice. National Collegiate has now resumed filing lawsuits.
The Do's and Don'ts for NCSLT Loans
DO NOT allow NCT to get a judgment against you by failing to respond to a summons and complaint.
NCT has obtained hundreds of judgments against people who did not bother to defend themselves even though they had valid defenses. If you fail to respond, NCT can get a default judgment against you and then garnish your non-exempt wages, seize your non-exempt assets and put liens on your real property.
DO NOT agree to judgment with an agreement that you will pay a small sum per month for six months or so.
NCT tries to get people to agree to this. If you do this you have waived your right to dispute the debt and at the end of that period, the judgment can be enforced against your nonexempt assets and up to 15% of your wages. Judgments are enforceable for 20-27 years in Illinois and bear interest at 9%. Some of these agreements don’t even pay the interest on the judgment. Any agreement should completely resolve the debt, with a substantial discount.
DO NOT make the mistake of calling NCT or its attorneys or debt collectors before speaking to an attorney.
A Chicago student loan debt lawyer from our firm can review your documents and consult with you without charge. We can advise you whether you have a defense, whether we will take your case and what our fees will be.
DO NOT ASSUME THAT NCT IS ENTITLED TO COLLECT without having a student loan attorney to examine your potential defenses.
About NCT Cases
We believe that most NCT cases have serious problems with them, for multiple reasons:
First, NCT sometimes cannot prove that it has the right to collect on the student loan debt at issue. In at least one case, National Collegiate filed suit on a loan that had been assigned to another entity and paid in full to that entity.
Sometimes National Collegiate cannot prove the amount due. NCT loans are actually serviced by Transworld/ NCO Financial, an organization which has a long history of consent orders and government investigations. Transworld is currently under investigation by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; this casts doubt on the accuracy of any records it produces.
Some suits appear to be filed beyond the statute of limitations.
The interest rates on some of the loans may be unlawful.
Finally, we believe that many or all of the obligations of cosigners under these loans may not be enforceable.