<p>cobrat:</p>
<p>Your posts come across as if you think a cosigner shouldn’t be obliged to pay back the loan they promised to pay in the event where the primary borrower died regardless of the cosigner’s ability to pay. If that was written into the loan contract then fine but if it’s not then I don’t understand why someone would try to apply ‘compassion’ and force the bank to pay in this circumstance. I can flip it around - the cosigner should have compassion for the bank and its shareholders to ensure they’re not adversely affected due to the cosigner’s failure to hold up their end of the bargain.</p>
<p>I’ll extend the point - do you think the ‘compassion’ and failure to meet the obligations on the part of the cosigner should be limited only to the death of the primary or do you think it should extend to an illness/accident that might happen to the primary, or due to the primary dipping into substance abuse, or due to the primary simply being lazy and not meeting their obligations to repay? Where are you drawing the artificial line (artificial because it’s not covered under the contract)?</p>
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What do you think the purpose of cosigning a loan is?</p>
<p>The bottom line is no one can predict exactly what’ll happen to the student that can impact their ability to pay back themselves whether it be a premature death, illness/injury, substance abuse, inability to get a well paying job, further loan abuse on the student’s part (leveraging themselves to the max and impacting their ability to pay), laziness, etc. If you cosign a loan you’re taking a risk and with a student loan a substantial risk so it shouldn’t be taken lightly and no one should ever cosign any loan without having the expectation they might need to repay it themselves and without having the means to do so. To do otherwise is foolish.</p>