Grieving Father Struggles to Pay Dead Son’s Student Loans #p2 #tcot

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A few months after he buried his son, Francisco Reynoso began gettingnotices in the mail. Then the debt collectors came calling."They would say, 'We don't care what happened with your son, you have to pay us,'" recalled Reynoso, a gardener from Palmdale, Calif.Reynoso's son, Freddy, had been the pride of his family and the first to go to college. In 2005, after Freddy wasaccepted to Boston's Berklee College of Music, his father co-signed on his hefty private student loans, making him fully liable should Freddy be unwilling or unable to repay them. It was no small decision for a man who made justover $21,000 in 2011, according to his tax returns."As a father, you'll do anything for your child," Reynoso, an American citizen originally from Mexico, said through a translator.Now, he's suffering a Kafkaesque ordeal in which he's hounded to repay loans that funded an education his son willnever get to use — loans that he has little hope of ever paying off. While Reynoso's wife, Sylvia, is studying to be a beautician, his gardening is currently the sole source of income for the family, which includes his 18-year-olddaughter Evelyn.And the loans are maddeningly opaque. Despite the help of a lawyer, Reynoso has not been able to determine exactly how much he owes, or even what company holds his loans. Just as happened with home mortgages in theboom years before the 2008 financial crash, his son's student loans have been sold and resold, and at least one was likely bundled into a complex Wall Street security. But the trail of those transactions ends at a wall of corporatesilence from companies that include two household names: banking giant UBS and Xerox, which owns the loan servicer handling the bulk of his loans. Left without answers is a bereaved father.The risk of cosigning on Freddy's loans seemed to have been worth it when he graduated in May 2008 and began looking for a job in the music industry. He was on the way back from a job interview on the evening of Sept. 4 whenhe lost control of his car and it rolled over. Freddy's family learned of his death the next morning.
rest at http://www.propublica.org/article/grieving-father-struggles-to-pay-dead-sons-student-loans