[Noodles89]

My signigicant other has substantial debt that he's never even looked at. Both medical and student debt.

Student-He graduated in 2004 from a private college, used loans to pay for the whole thing, so I'm estimating the original debt was 35-50k, he's never made a single payment, doesn't know who the lenders were (his parents filled out all the forms, had him sign them, then never talked to him again), and does not have a single bit of information about his debt at all. The debts have obviously been given to collections, he gets called from debt collectors all the time (a lot of which use illegal means, pretending their some other kind of business, making threats, calling family members not on the forms, and people unrelated to him), they threatened to garnish his wages, but he's a bartender, so after taxes his actual checks are $0.

Medical- he went to the emergency room with kidney stones without any insurance, again he didn't give me much information about the situation, I think he may have stayed at night in the hospital, I know he was given morphine, I would probably put this debt in the same estimated original amount as the student debt, this was in the early 2000s as well (happened when he was in college) again he has NO information about this at all.

I'm quite a bit younger than him, and have zero debt. I'm not really sure how to even start with this, I've got everything prepared to get his credit report to figure out how much debt he's really in, but I'm scared by it. I'm also tracking our expenses right now so we can make a budget. We want to get his debt taken care of before making our next big life steps (marriage, buying a house, etc.).

Any suggestions? I know bankruptcy could take care of the medical debt, is that a good idea? I mean I know it ruins your credit and stays on your record for 7 years, but I don't think there's any possible way we could pay all of this off, and his credit already sucks anyway. About the student debt, I've heard something about consolidating the debt? Is that a possibility after its gone to collections? I've also just heard a lot of stuff thrown our there about a time frame after which they can't take action against you anymore? I've also heard something about if you can save up some certain percentage of the principal amount that you may be able to settle with the debt collectors for that amount? Like I said, I have no idea where to start, or who to go to with this. I assume there's some kind of lawyer or something that could help navigate this stuff, but I have no clue.

Let me know if you have any information that could help.

[Noodles89]

By the way, we live in Texas if that helps at all.

[Fr_Chuck]

If the medical debt is old enough to be outside the SOL just forget it, they can't sue after that period, and it will drop off the report soon enough.

If you have to pay the medical debt offer about 20 cents on the dollar as a settlement

The college debts will be the issue, most likely they take all the federal income tax money already, and that debt most likely has doubled with late fees, non payment and penalties.
So you need to get hold of that.

Everything needs to be put down on paper and a budge written out, he needs to acknowledge the debts and perhaps go to a debt counselor together