My spouse acquired an undergraduate, MBA, and doctorate degree and currently has roughly $350k in student loan debt. Upon submitting our joint tax return, the lender denied her request for income based repayment, citing a lack of information regarding my personal income and the frequency of it. After reading the communication from the lender, it states that they need a pay stub from me, a non-borrowing, non-guaranteeing spouse before they will consider utilizing IBR.

My questions are, since this is all pre-marital debt, am I under any obligation to send them a pay stub for her to qualify?  I have no student loan debt, but carry all of our personal debt. Are they going to try to pull my credit bureau to calculate the IBR?  Their communications indicate that this is a standard method of doing business, but I am loathe to provide any of my personal information to a lender for which I personally owe no money.

The lender is Nelnet and the debt was incurred in Missouri, where we still live. The payment amount that they “fabricated/calculated” would not stress us, but I would like to be able to have more freedom to decide which loan or group of loans to put the payments towards based on their interest rates.

Thank you for the help

“My questions are, since this is all pre-marital debt, am I under any obligation to send them a pay stub for her to qualify?”

Unfortunately yes, if you and your spouse are legally married and you file your taxes married jointly then your income will be taken into consideration when calculating the IBR amount. The only way for your income to not taken into consideration/required is for the two of you to file your taxes married but filing separately but that obviously has tax implications which could end up costing you more money. If you live in a community property state that could also throw you another curve ball. It sucks but that’s just how the cookie crumbles with the income based repayment plans.   

“Are they going to try to pull my credit bureau to calculate the IBR?”

Not sure what you mean by credit bureau… they won’t pull your credit score. That’s why they are asking for your check stubs. They just want to be able to confirm how much money you are making.