Attorney Seeking Advice

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I can offer you some hope on the financial issue.

Student loans are currently exempt from bankruptcy protection unless you can make a "hardship" case (very, very difficult to do).

However, the ICR (Income Contingent Repayment) plan (from the Dept. of Education) sets payments at a max of 20% of your "disposable income" (gross income - poverty level for your size family = disposable income). This keeps payments to something you can afford no matter what you do for a living. Hardest issue is that ICR often goes by tax records, so if you take a serious reduction in pay, you need to file documentation to prove current income so you can manage payment.

Under ICR, what is not paid off after 25 years of repayment is "forgiven," but currently the forgiven amount is subject to income taxation.

A new program, IBR (Income Based Repayment) is a duplication of the ICR plan (why they didn't modify ICR I don't know), but under IBR, if you work for a government entity (city, county, state, federal), there is a 10-year loan forgiveness program and that loan forgiveness is tax free (ironic since most government jobs allow you to be able to repay your student loans ). This program also has the 25-year loan forgiveness option.

There is a push to make the 25-year loan forgiveness equitable based on the rationale that "forgiveness" isn't really "forgiveness" if you have to pay taxes. Arguably, if you couldn't pay off your student loans, you don't have the money for the taxes, and I've found bankruptcy court rulings upholding that the tax liability constitutes a "hardship" that makes student loans subject to discharge under bankruptcy (since tax liabilities are not subject to bankruptcy discharge). As of now, it has not yet happened.

Just an option if you want to change professions and still manage your student loan debt.

More details on IBR can be found at http://www.ibrinfo.org/

Hi, I don't know if this helps because I'm in the UK and the professions are organised quite differently, but I do have the sort of job that you describe in that last post marlowe221, and most of the time I manage pretty well.

I do contract and real estate law in a fairly big firm, where a lot of the clients are long term, corporations and government departments who appoint their lawyers for years at a time on the basis of tenders rather than cocktail parties. There IS pressure to do some marketing, but I am not expected to do that all much because I'm patently not good at it (I'm not open about AS but the social skills deficit is plain enough). Happily big firms are generally stuffed full of ambitious associates who just love schmoosing, with clients and with partners, who will leap at the chance to do that sort of thing. The downside of taking a back office role in the hierarchy is that I miss out on promotions (therefore have steady but unspectacular money). Also on some interesting projects I would be suited to, but which to pander to the clients' egos have to be fronted by a partner rather than an associate, however senior.

I think there are other areas of law too, like insurance and tax which also suit an Aspie character, though of course none of these areas is of any use if you're not enthused by doing them.

Of course what I do now wasn't what I had in mind at law college either, like most peole I wanted to "get out there and help people". My first jobs were with high street law firms, but it was just too draining. I comfort myself by thinking that I'm not exactly saving the planet when I help a client buy or sell a warehouse or something, but I probably AM helping some of their staff improve their job security or prospects.