Ask most people — including, until recently, most lawyers — whether student loans can be discharged in bankruptcy, and you’ll get a flat “no.” That answer was never quite the whole story, and since late 2022 it has been materially wrong for federal loans. The federal discharge process created then is still open and operating in 2026. If you’re in Pennsylvania carrying federal student loans you genuinely cannot pay, this is worth understanding.
How the Federal Process Works
In November 2022, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education issued joint guidance that changed how the government evaluates bankruptcy discharge requests for federally held student loans — Direct Loans, FFEL, and Perkins Loans. The borrower files an adversary proceeding (a lawsuit inside the bankruptcy case) and submits an attestation: a detailed form covering income, expenses, and the efforts made to repay. The government then evaluates three things — your present ability to pay, whether the hardship is likely to persist into the future, and whether you’ve made good-faith efforts to manage the loans. Where the attestation supports it, the government often stipulates — agrees — to a full or partial discharge instead of fighting the case. That stipulation piece is the revolution: the other side is no longer automatically your opponent.
The attestation form itself was revised in May 2025, with expanded expense categories and clearer hardship presumptions. In plain terms, the form now does a better job of capturing what real household budgets look like, which matters for borrowers whose hardship is genuine but was hard to show under the older, narrower categories.
What Has Not Changed — and the Honest Caveats
The statute has not changed. Section 523(a)(8) still says student loans are excepted from discharge unless repayment would impose an undue hardship — the guidance works within that standard; it didn’t repeal it. You still have to file an adversary proceeding, which is separate litigation beyond a basic bankruptcy filing, with its own work and cost. And the big federal student-loan legislation of 2025, which changed loan limits and repayment plans, did not change bankruptcy dischargeability — don’t let headlines about that law confuse the question.
Private student loans are a different analysis entirely. They’re not covered by the federal attestation process, and whether a particular private loan even falls under § 523(a)(8) depends on what kind of loan it actually was. Some private loans that borrowers assume are untouchable aren’t. Both directions of this — federal and private — reward a loan-by-loan look rather than a blanket assumption.
What This Means for You
If federal student loans are a major part of your debt load, a bankruptcy conversation in 2026 that skips the student loans is an incomplete conversation. The realistic candidates are people whose income simply doesn’t support repayment — disability, low wages in a field the degree didn’t change, decades of payments with a balance that grew anyway. If that sounds like you, the attestation process gives your case a structure and a fair audience that didn’t exist five years ago. If your income is solid and the loans are manageable, bankruptcy won’t fix them, and I’ll tell you that plainly too.
Bring Your Loan Records and Ask the Question Directly
Call the Law Offices of Jason P. Provinzano, LLC at 570-822-5771 for a free consultation at 16 W. Northampton Street in Wilkes-Barre. Bring your student loan statements, and we’ll separate the federal loans from the private ones, look at your real ability to pay, and tell you honestly whether the discharge process is worth pursuing in your case.
This article is general information about bankruptcy law, not legal advice about your specific situation.
