Sometimes, but not the way the rest of your debt goes away. Most credit card and medical debt disappears when the court enters your discharge. Student loans survive that same discharge unless you ask the court separately to erase them and show that paying them would be an undue hardship on you and your dependents.
Your discharge order does not touch your student loans on its own
Section 523(a)(8) of the Bankruptcy Code holds educational loans out of the discharge "unless excepting such debt from discharge would impose an undue hardship on the debtor and the debtor's dependents." That exception works by itself. No creditor has to object and your lender does not have to file anything. So if your discharge arrived and the servicer started billing you again weeks later, nothing went wrong with your case. That is the statute working.
Asking the court to erase them means a separate case inside your bankruptcy
Under Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 7001, deciding whether a debt is dischargeable takes an adversary proceeding. That is a lawsuit filed inside your bankruptcy, with its own case number, a complaint you file, and the loan holder as the defendant. For federal loans, the United States is on the other side. It is real litigation, and it is not part of a standard Chapter 7. We go through what that filing involves on our student loan discharge site.
In Nevada the test has three parts and all three have to hold
Nevada sits in the Ninth Circuit, which adopted the three-part test from a 1987 case called Brunner. You have to show that you cannot keep even a minimal standard of living for yourself and your dependents if you have to repay, that additional circumstances make that situation likely to persist for a significant part of the repayment period, and that you have made good faith efforts to repay. Courts read the test strictly for years, which is where the belief that student loans can never be discharged came from. The test has not changed; what changed is how the government handles these cases.
Since November 2022 the government has had a published process
On November 17, 2022, the Justice Department and the Department of Education issued joint guidance for discharge cases where the United States is the defendant. The debtor completes an attestation form, signed under penalty of perjury, covering income, expenses, assets, payment history, and enrollment in an income-driven repayment plan. Present ability to pay is measured against the IRS Collection Financial Standards. On whether the hardship will last, the guidance lists circumstances that create a rebuttable presumption, among them being 65 or older, having a disability or chronic injury, being unemployed for at least five of the last ten years, never completing the degree the loans paid for, and having been in repayment more than ten years.
Say you borrowed in 2011, left without finishing, and have been in and out of forbearance since. Two of those apply to you on their face. That does not win the case, because the guidance is explicit that the government's recommendation does not bind the judge, who decides independently. Policies like this can also be revised.
What a trustee does and does not decide here
Brian D. Shapiro is one of only four Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Trustees in the District of Nevada, so a word from that side of the table. Student loans are one of the few things a trustee's work never reaches. A trustee looks for assets that are not exempt and can be sold for creditors. Whether your loan is dischargeable is between you, the loan holder, and the judge. Nobody rules on it at your 341 meeting, and a no-asset report says nothing about it either way.
You do not have to decide this on the day you file
Under Rule 4007(b) a complaint to determine dischargeability, outside the narrow categories carrying a 60-day deadline, may be filed at any time. Filing a Chapter 7 now for the credit cards and the medical bills, then taking up the student loans later once your circumstances are documented, is a legitimate sequence rather than a missed chance.
If student loans are why you have been putting off a hard look at your finances, a conversation is free. We keep a separate site devoted to these cases, with more on how the adversary proceeding works, at lasvegasstudentloanattorney.com. The Law Office of Brian D. Shapiro works remotely, so consultations happen by phone or video call, and Chapter 7 cases start with $0 down in attorney fees, with no attorney fees until after the petition is filed. The court's filing fee is separate and must be paid before your case is filed. Call 702-386-8600 and we can look at your actual situation.