‘I have a chance now to have a life’: Navy vet who won watershed student loan ruling tells his story
For nearly 15 years, U.S. Navy veteran Kevin Rosenberg owed six figures in student loans.
But on January 7, 2020, a New York judge ruled that the $221,385.49 in student loan debt owed by Rosenberg as of November 2019 was dischargeable under chapter 7 bankruptcy.
“I have a chance now to have a life,” the 46-year-old Rosenberg told Yahoo Finance in an interview.
A bankruptcy expert told Yahoo Finance that Rosenberg’s case is a watershed in that it dispels the notion that student loans were not dischargeable in bankruptcy.
“What I found most fascinating, and I think heartening, is the very strong language that the judge used to call out on what she calls this quasi-mythic status of student loan non-dischargeability,” Jason Iuliano, an assistant professor of law at Villanova University and an expert on bankruptcy, told Yahoo Finance. “I’ve never seen it put quite so pointedly before in a judicial opinion like that.”
After more than a decade of going through the student loan system — making on-time payments, following up with loan servicers, keeping up with the paperwork — he was finally free of his student debt.