Am I going to have to pay my ex’s student loan debt after divorce?
It is more common than not that each spouse will take their own student loan debt with them after divorce.
Massachusetts has the eighth highest average student debt level in the United States, according to the Institute for College Access and Success. For undergraduate education alone, Massachusetts grads have an average student loan debt of $33,457. Add on a graduate, medical, or law degree and that number can skyrocket into the hundreds of thousands.
This is not just a problem for the young. Borrowers ages 35 to 49 owe more than $620 billion in student loans nationwide and 2.4 million people over age 62 still carry student loan debt. As a result, many couples who are divorcing even after long term marriages have student loan debt that the courts will address.
In any Massachusetts divorce, the Court is tasked with ordering an “equitable” division of the parties’ assets and debts. An “equitable distribution” does not always mean an equal division. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 208, Section 34:
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartII/TitleIII/Chapter208/Section34
In a 2018 case called Bennett v. Bennett, the appeals court upheld the trial court’s decision to assign half of the wife’s student loan debt to the husband.
That might sound unfair. Here are the facts that the judge heard in that case: During the marriage, the parties paid off the husband’s student loans but not the wife’s. The judge also found that, during the marriage, the husband secretly spent large amounts of money for his own purposes and failed to be transparent with the wife about the family’s finances.
The SJC (Massachusetts’ highest court) has not ruled on the issue of dividing student loan debt in a divorce. Whether and how to apportion this debt is up to the judge’s discretion and is going to depend on the specific facts of your case.
Some facts that weigh in favor of assigning one spouse a portion of the other’s student debt:
The indebted spouse gave up employment opportunities in order to raise the parties’ children and has thus lost earning potential associated with the degree;
The student debt was not paid because money was spent on some benefit to the non-owing spouse;
The marriage is sufficiently long-term that both parties’ benefitted from the indebted party’s education.
Some facts that weigh in favor of each party taking their own student debt:
The marriage was short term;
The indebted spouse stands to earn more money in the future as a result of their education;
The debt was incurred prior to the marriage.
For most couples divorcing after short or mid-length marriages, each spouse will take their own student loan debt with them. But it is not automatic. There is no “separate property” when it comes to divorce in Massachusetts.
