Income based forgiveness timeline
Timeline of how student loan forgiveness/ discharged occurred.
I was always in an Income Based Repayment Plan since I started repayment in 2004.
I was in PAYE until the COVID-19 forbearance.
I contacted a student loan lawyer Jay Fleischman in June 2004. He recommended that I consolidate which would qualify me for the ONE-Time Student Loan Adjustment.
June 2024 I applied for SAVE. Nov 2024 application was approved. Then I was in the SAVE forbearance.
April 2025 SAVE litigation over and repayment was starting. I was kicked off SAVE and automatically put on Standard. Made 1 payment on standard.
May 2025 met with lawyer again. He told me to apply for IBR because I only needed 6 more payments on IBR until forgiveness.
6/16/25: IBR accepted. Payment was not due until August. But I wanted forgiveness before 2026 to avoid the taxes on the forgiven/ discharged debt/ loan. First payment was 7/7/25. Last payment was 12/1/25.
In Jan 2026 my Mohela account was seeing weird changes. It was overdue by $13000, but removed 1 week later. FAS website student loan stimulator changed forgiveness options and totals. (most likely because I had been given forgivenes)
On 2/12/26: Received golden letter stating I had until March 5 to not accept a discharge of my student loan loans.
On 2/21/26 Mohela placed me in administrative forbearance until 4/22/26. Automatic Recertification of income was started which started this forbearance.
On 3/6/26: I contacted mohela and a verified that they had received notification of the discharge of my loans and we’re working on discharging my loans, but no changes to my account. Borrowers with Nelnet and Aidvantage were already seeing $0 on their accounts.
On 3/18/26 I got a letter from Mohela which stated: MOHELA received your request for an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan. We are unable to grant your
request for the following reason(s):
· The balance on your eligible loans is zero.
On 3/18/26 Mohela stated $0. Account 1: $0 paid off by discharge. Account 2: $0 in forbearance.
On 3/25/26: Department of Education website states $0 balance. Green banner
4/9/26 Credit report states loan is $0 and paid off 12/31/2025.
5/5/26 received a letter from Mohela stating that I needed to recertify for my income based plan. It stated if I didn’t recertify, I would go on a basic standard plan. “Your monthly payment will adjust to approximately $448.20”. I called and Mohela confirm my account is still a zero balance and to ignore this letter.
As of today 5/18/26 my account still has a forbearance on one account with $0. I am still pending a refund which I should get by June 6th.
Hope this helps anyone on their forgiveness journe.