43 – Student Loan Forgiveness and Bankruptcy Law – With Daniel Venoit

Today’s guest is Daniel Veinot, a lawyer and partner at Duncan Linton in Waterloo, and we discuss student loan debts and how they are handled by bankruptcy law. Daniel discusses whether student loans are automatically discharged in a bankruptcy or consumer proposal, when it's possible to go to court and how many years an individual needs to be out of school before they can discharge any outstanding student loan debts.

Student loan debt is on the increase. In May, 2015 we released our biennial Joe Debtor study assessing debt levels based on over 6000 client files from 2013-2014 and revealed that student loan debt is a growing problem in Canada. From that study we found that 13.4% of people who filed bankruptcy or a consumer proposal with us had student loan debt (up from 12.7 two years earlier). What's more, average student loan debt increased 4.3% over the past two years to just under $14,000.

On today’s show we discuss the law, and your options for dealing with student loan debt.