Summary:
In In re Slawsky, Bankruptcy Judge George R. Hodges approved a stipulated partial undue hardship discharge of approximately $209,100 in federal student loan debt under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(8), following an agreement between the pro se debtor, Melissa Slawsky, and the United States Department of Education.
Ms. Slawsky deserves considerable credit for successfully pursuing this relief without counsel. Her persistence ultimately resulted in discharge of 11 of her 12 outstanding student loans, leaving only approximately $5,233 attributable to a recently obtained MBA.
That success, however, came only after a lengthy and unnecessarily complicated proceeding involving a Motion to Dismiss by the United States Attorney, improper service of process, amended complaints, multiple hearings and stays, extensive documentary submissions, and a deposition lasting more than three hours.
The Chapter 7 bankruptcy was filed on April 21, 2025, with the Student Loan Adversary Proceeding (SLAP) following on May 19, 2025. The consent order discharging the student loans was not entered until September 10, 2026—nearly 17 months after the bankruptcy filing.
The Debtor's Financial Circumstances
Ms. Slawsky, age 46 at the time of her deposition, held multiple advanced degrees, including a Ph.D. in Music Education and a recently completed MBA. Despite those credentials, she had experienced decades of intermittent employment, including extended periods working as an adjunct professor, consulting work displaced in part by technological developments, and ongoing medical limitations resulting from back surgery.
Her household income remained insufficient to meet reasonable living expenses, even before any student loan payments. The parties' stipulation identified monthly household take-home income of approximately $6,160 against necessary expenses exceeding $7,148.
Her older student loans had been in repayment for more than a decade. She had made more than 55 post-consolidation payments, participated in income-driven repayment programs, and obtained credit for 13 qualifying Public Service Loan Forgiveness payments.
Ultimately, the Department of Education stipulated that repayment of her 11 pre-MBA loans would satisfy all three elements of the Brunner undue hardship test, as adopted in the Fourth Circuit by Educational Credit Management Corp. v. Frushour, 433 F.3d 393 (4th Cir. 2005).
The parties agreed that her more recent MBA loan would remain nondischargeable.
A Procedurally Difficult Road to Discharge
The procedural history is particularly instructive.
On June 20, 2025, the United States Attorney filed a Motion to Dismiss challenging both the sufficiency of the Complaint and service of process.
The government argued that Ms. Slawsky had failed to properly serve all three required recipients: the Department of Education, the United States Attorney, and the Attorney General. It further maintained that her allegations failed to establish the demanding Brunner standard.
Rather than dismiss the proceeding, Judge Hodges allowed an amended complaint and stayed the matter to permit participation in the Department of Justice/Department of Education attestation process.
Additional amendments, court proceedings, and extensions followed.
On March 10, 2026, Assistant United States Attorney Gill Beck conducted a deposition of Ms. Slawsky, beginning at 11:01 a.m. and concluding at approximately 2:12 p.m. The 3-hour-and-11-minute deposition generated approximately 98 pages of substantive testimony addressing her educational history, employment, income, expenses, medical conditions, student loan repayment history, and future earning capacity.
Although the debtor had previously provided substantial documentation, the deposition became an important part of the evidentiary record supporting the eventual settlement.
The parties ultimately submitted a detailed joint stipulation, an updated 15-page Attestation, supporting financial documentation, and the deposition transcript.
On September 10, 2026, Judge Hodges entered the Consent Order determining that Ms. Slawsky's 11 pre-MBA loans were dischargeable, while her recently incurred MBA loan remained enforceable.
Commentary
This case is both an encouraging demonstration that the Department of Justice's student loan undue hardship attestation process can work and a cautionary example of why debtors should ordinarily retain competent bankruptcy counsel.
First, Ms. Slawsky deserves congratulations for her persistence, preparation, and ultimate success. She researched the applicable legal standards, assembled considerable supporting documentation, navigated federal litigation without counsel, and ultimately obtained relief from more than $209,000 in student loan debt.
The case also reflects positively on AUSA Gill Beck and the Department of Education for ultimately evaluating the debtor's circumstances and agreeing to a substantial discharge rather than insisting on contested litigation through trial.
But the result should not obscure how difficult and time-consuming this became.
Much of the procedural litigation could likely have been avoided through competent representation at the outset.
An experienced student loan bankruptcy attorney would ordinarily have ensured proper service of process, prepared a complaint adequately pleading undue hardship, assembled the supporting financial documentation, and, most importantly, submitted a complete Attestation to the United States Attorney at the beginning of the adversary proceeding.
The DOJ/DOE student loan discharge Guidance was developed to promote greater efficiency and consistency in the handling of undue hardship adversary proceedings, replacing unnecessarily expensive and contentious litigation with a more standardized process for evaluating a debtor's financial circumstances, repayment history, and future ability to pay.
Its purpose is not simply to make discharges more accessible to eligible debtors, but also to conserve the resources of the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, and the bankruptcy courts by avoiding unnecessary discovery, depositions, and trials.
Instead, Ms. Slawsky faced a Motion to Dismiss, multiple amended pleadings, repeated court appearances, lengthy delays, and a formal deposition. While a deposition may be appropriate in some student loan proceedings, an experienced attorney could have worked to provide sufficient documentation and negotiate a resolution without that additional burden.
Certainly, Ms. Slawsky had no obligation to make the Department of Justice's job easier, nor any responsibility to future student loan debtors. Her only obligation was to pursue the relief she needed for herself and her family. And she succeeded.
Nonetheless, avoiding extensive discovery and a lengthy deposition would have benefited not only Ms. Slawsky but also the Assistant United States Attorney handling the matter. The substantial time devoted to preparing for and conducting the deposition, reviewing additional documentation, addressing procedural issues, and negotiating a resolution represents government resources that might otherwise have been available to evaluate and resolve other student loan discharge cases.
That is particularly important because the DOJ/DOE Guidance is intended to establish a more efficient and consistent process that can be used across cases, rather than requiring every debtor and every Assistant United States Attorney to reinvent the litigation process.
When the attestation process works as intended, debtors benefit from faster and less expensive relief, government attorneys can evaluate more cases with fewer resources, and future debtors benefit from a system that is less cumbersome and adversarial.
There is, of course, no guarantee that retaining counsel would have eliminated all these steps or shortened the proceeding. The government retains discretion to request additional information and contest discharge, even where an attorney provides a complete Attestation.
Still, the procedural history illustrates the distinction between eventually obtaining a favorable result and obtaining that result efficiently.
It is also worth emphasizing that Ms. Slawsky did not entirely forgo legal guidance. The final stipulation expressly recognized that she had sought guidance from multiple attorneys during the process. That is not the same as having an attorney responsible for preparing her case, handling procedural requirements, negotiating with the United States Attorney, and presenting the supporting evidence.
The partial nature of the discharge also warrants attention. Although the parties agreed that her longstanding music-education loans presented an undue hardship, the recently incurred MBA loan survived. That distinction demonstrates that undue hardship determinations can be tailored to individual loans rather than requiring an all-or-nothing discharge of an entire student loan portfolio.
Finally, this case illustrates a broader problem with celebrating successful pro se litigation as evidence that attorneys are unnecessary.
Ms. Slawsky was unusually educated, persistent, and capable of researching and presenting her own case. Most financially distressed student loan borrowers lack the time, resources, legal knowledge, or personal circumstances necessary to undertake nearly 17 months of federal litigation.
Even for Ms. Slawsky, the effort required was substantial.
The lesson of Slawsky is not that student loan borrowers do not need attorneys. It is that even a highly capable and determined pro se debtor can face significant, avoidable obstacles in obtaining relief that the DOJ/DOE attestation process was intended to make more accessible, efficient, and consistent.
Competent representation is not merely about whether a debtor can ultimately obtain a student loan discharge. It is also about obtaining that discharge with less delay, fewer procedural mistakes, less uncertainty, and less personal burden—while allowing government counsel and the courts to devote their limited resources to cases where genuine disputes require litigation.
Ms. Slawsky achieved a remarkable result. With competent representation and a complete Attestation submitted at the outset, she might well have achieved substantially the same relief far sooner and with considerably less difficulty, to the benefit of everyone involved.
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