Great website/forum, I’ve been looking for something like this for years.

Brief overview:

-My wife owes $90k in loans, accumulated from 2000-2007 (undergrad and grad)
-She has been paying through IBR for about 3 years
-We got married in May 2014.
-For 2014, we filed married, filing separately.

I keep finding conflicting information on if we are going to be forced to use our joint income in her IBR payment in the future due to changes in student loan policy. Some people think only new borrows (loans originating after July 1, 2016) will have to include their spouses income for IBR, others think that everyone in the IBR program will.

If we have to include both incomes, we will be in bad shape financially.

Does anyone have a definitive answer?

Thanks!

AFAIK, if she is already on IBR, nothing will change. IBR allows you to file separately if you don’t want both incomes considered. The future changes are only going to happen with the PAYE plan, and the current PAYE plan isn’t even really changing. (just like there is an old IBR and a new IBR, there will be an old PAYE and a new PAYE. People won’t be forced into another plan, as far as I can gather..as it hasn’t happened in the past). The new PAYE plan will allow more people to enroll in it (the old PAYE only allowed recent borrowers to enroll) but it WILL take into account both incomes. There is no way around this.

Remember, the correct term is REPAYE, and the rules are not yet final.

For many people, its seems IBR will be preferable to REPAYE. Apparently the government saw fit to put in place a marriage penalty. Seems stupid given that we’re heading for a demographic crisis as the boomers age.

I remind you all to make your comments on the proposed rule and let them know how silly it is to push married couples into IBR. ( And given that PAYE, for people who had no loans before 2012 or whatever year, can still file as MFS ). Its just a bizarre maze. Some repayment programs force your wife/husband to pay your loans, some don’t. They need to stop this madness.

Nobody was married when they took out there loans, it makes no sense to punish their future spouse.