can't pay my sallie mae private student loans

Unfortunately private student loans have their own challenges. They cannot be discharged in bankruptcy and Sallie Mae will sue as a matter of business practices. Only thing you can do is change your financial situation, increase your income. Did you have a cosignor?

If you cant pay them, how would you pay an attorney?

Hang in there pochu! You are not the only out there going through this with private student loans. We are in the beginnings of a huge student loan crisis much like where we were with the subprime mortgage crisis. Your head would spin off if you knew how much the govt, lenders, and colleges were in cahoots with one another leading to this dreadful situation. Things are getting so bad that something just has to be done. An entire generation will be financially wiped out if not. There are bills being proposed in Congress to restore bankruptcy rights to private student loan holders. Hang in there. Justice will be served.

What he doesnt tell you above is that in order to qualify for bankruptcy on a student loan is that you have to be in repayment for 7 years for it to qualify in bankruptcy...thus lender will sue quicker.

As the 2 bills are written right now (there is one floating around the House and another in the Senate- you can check the opencongress website for the exact wording), there is no time lag requiring a certain number of years to pass before being eligible to declare bankruptcy. However, even if such a time period were to be institituted, I'd much rather pay whatever I could scrape together every month for 5-7 years than being hunted down and hounded for 50-70 years till I drop dead without a penny to my name.

They will not allow any student loan to be discharged without the time period like it was before. That opens the doors to abuses like what caused them to close the bankruptcy clause in 98. The final bill will be restrictive.

They wont allow you to scrape together payments....they will defaulted you on the same schedule and then sue quicker...allowing them to garnish and levy quicker.