There are a couple of reasons why your Spouse information is required to submit an Income Driven Repayment (IDR) Application.
- When you file taxes jointly, some plans require documentation of your combined income to calculate your monthly payment.
- If you file taxes separately, your spouse's income will only be necessary to calculate payments for the Joint ICR plan.
- If both you and your spouse have Federal student loans, additional information is required for the IDR application (ie, Full Name, Date of Birth, SSN). This will also be considered when calculating an income-driven repayment amount, taking your spouse’s loan balance into account. Generally this results in a payment which is more reasonable, based on your combined income-to-debt ratio (among other factors)
- In some cases we may ask your spouse to complete a shortened version of the Savi application where they only need to provide their loan information.
Rest assured, this in NO WAY assumes spouse responsibility or any guarantees on your loans, and your loans will always be in your name. Your spouse will also not be required to enroll in Savi Essential to provide us with their information, they can complete the required steps at no additional cost.
Note: There was once a temporary program in place (which no longer exists) which allowed for spouses to consolidate their loans together. As of now, we are not aware of a process to separate loans which have been consolidated via this process. If this applies to you, and you wish to separate a joint spousal consolidation loan, visit this article for more information: https://bysavi.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500007391481-What-s-the-deal-with-Joint-Spousal-Consolidation-Loans