Decades old college loans?

You need to contact the US dept of Education for a current status of your loans.Once you have that contact naca.net for a referral for a consumer attorney.

As an ex-collector, I would advise you to attempt to settle by yourself. By all means, consult an attorney. However anytime an attorney would call on behalf of a borrower, our settlement would be less.

Depending on the balance, you should be able to have most or all of the collection costs waived. Unless you are in dire financial straits, they probably will not waive any principal or interest.

You may also want to look at rehabbing or consolidating the loan to bring it current.

When an Attorney was hired the consumer ended up having to pay MORE than if they tried to settle it themselves?

Settlements are discretionary and can easily be negotiated by the borrower. Having an attorney calling is basically telling the CA and the collector that you not so hard up. Quite frankly when I was collecting, dealing with an attorney is a pain in the rear end. It took up too much of our time having to deal with a third party. Thus we would only maybe take off 25-50%. If the borrower called in we could negotiate directly and get it over and done with. We would fax a settlement agreement to the borrower and provided the settlement payment arrived within the specified time frame, it was over and done with in a couple of calls.

FYI...settlements are easier if they are offered in the last week of the month. The collector is either trying to hit their goal or it is icing on the cake. At the beginning of the month the collector has time to negotiate and putz around a bit.

Find out exactly what you owe with collection costs. If your credit report is the pits, offer them principal and interest and see what happens from there. If your credit is bad plus you are unemployed, own nothing you might get some interest waived.