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Discharging Student Loans in Bankruptcy Show Mixed Results



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Alista Lineburg is not a lawyer, but she assumed the role when she couldn’t find one to help her discharge $146,000 of federal student debt in bankruptcy. The process requires a separate lawsuit against the government, something that many lawyers refuse to take on given the time, expense and difficulty of winning.Ms. Lineburg, 49, knows this all too well. Even when the bankruptcy court tried to assign her counsel, there were no takers. “The attorney called and she said, ‘You can’t win this,’” Ms. Lineburg recalled.So she pressed on, alone.And, despite the odds, she won her case.“I feel like I can finally get ahead,” said Ms. Lineburg, who lives in Fairport Harbor, Ohio. She was laid off from her information technology job in June, just two months after clearing …

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