My wife and I recently married and both have substantial student loan debt from undergrad and veterinary school.  She is currently on IBR and my loans go into repayment at the end of this month (I will be IBR as well).  We both have consolidated direct loans, both with two different loan service providers.  We will be completing our 2012 income taxes in the next 30 days and it will be a joint return.  She works for a 501c3, as well.  My questions are….Do we need to consolidate our loans so that both our incomes are calculated fairly for IBR repayment (we make approximately the same income)?  Will it make a difference in the long run since she will most likely be with her 501c3 for 10+ years?  If we do NOT consolidate our loans together, how do the loan service providers calculate how much each service provider will receive?

Married couples may NOT consolidate their student loans together, and that’s a good thing.  It was once allowed but it was never a good idea.

You don’t need to combine your loans in order for the IBR payments to be calculated based on both husband and wife’s loans and distributed to the loans.  Assuming you file a joint return, what will happen is this: a total IBR payment due will be calculated based on the joint marital AGI and y’all’s aggregate loan balance.  Then the total IBR payment will be divided between the loans on a pro rata share. 

So for example, say together you owe $100,000.  You owe $75,000 of the marital debt, she owes $25,000.  IBR payment calculated using the joint AGI is determined to be $100.  In that case $75 is what is owed on your loans, $25 on her’s.

Hi Heather,

I have a related question: My wife and I are in a similar situation to Matthew and his wife in that we’re recently married, filed jointly for 2012, and both have direct loans with different loan service providers.  However, I repay under IBR and my wife repays under a 10-yr graduated repayment plan.  When I re-certified for IBR in August, my monthly payment was about $330 more than the IBR calculator on studentaid.ed.gov suggested my pro rata share would be.  But the total of my and my wife’s pro rata shares from the IBR calculator roughly equaled the monthly payment I have been told to pay after re-certification.

Does the fact that my wife repays under a graduated repayment plan mean her monthly payment amount (or even the fact that she has a direct loan balance) is not considered in determining my monthly payment amount under IBR?

This has been a very helpful site in the short time I’ve spent on it thus far.  Thanks for providing this service!