My wife and I both are qualified for public service forgiveness. (Flight nurse and state college professor) We have a 2004 ffelp spousal loan and I have an addition loan outside of the spousal consolidation. After speaking with fedloan servicing, I applied to have both the spousal and the additional loan consolidated into direct loans. The loans outside of the spousal consolidation 40k were moved to direct but the 180k spousal was not and is still at Navient(Sallie Mae). We have never defaulted, loans are in good standing and currently in deferrment. I see no reason that the spousal loan can’t be moved to direct and paid off under the public loan forgiveness program. I am being told that the reason is that it’s spousal.  I don’t think fedloan should have processed my consolidation loan application if the spousal loan was not included without notification. I called and requested that they cancel the application if it could not be processed as applied for and was told it was too late to stop the transition. Any advice? Would an attourney help? I just want to be able to take advantage of a program designed specifically for people in our professions.

Thank you for this great resource site!

I am so sorry to confirm that spousal consolidation loans cannot be consolidated into Direct.  It’s complete bullshit, but it’s true.  The Dept of Ed has consistently taken the position that no new spousal loans are authorized by statute.  Use the search box at the top of this page and you’ll see lots of related threads where I explain more fully.

As far as cancelling the consolidation application, I suggest you contact the Ombudsman’s office for help getting that worked out.