I’ve done a fair amount of research on this, but I haven’t found anything on parent plus loans. I want to legally change my name and I know how to update my loans and all, but my parent took out a plus loan for me. My question is, do I update them as I would my own or would I have to do something different?
A Parent Plus loan is in the name of the parent who borrowed the money.
But when she fills it out she has to put my name, do I have to change this as well?
If she is applying for new loans, yes the student listed should be in the new name IF you have changed all your paperwork - ID, SSN to match new name, changed name with university. For prior loans, no change needed. The lender should be able to track you with the SSN.
When you change your name, you’ll receive a court document (or wedding license), and then you need to use that to go change everything. It takes a while, but make sure you changed everything, especially at the SSA.
There’s a way to refi a PP loan but that’s not a simple name change and OP would have to qualify.
PP otherwise is the parent’s debt.
So OP, are you talking about assuming the loan or just updating, as twoinanddone addresses?
Changing the borrow on a loan is different, and I don’t think that can be done under federal regulations (nor would any lender want to do that). He asked about changing the name of the student the loan benefited, like the parent borrowed money for John Smith and now the student wants to be legally known as Jim Jones. Makes no difference to the lender, as parent is still liable.
Thank you guys for chiming in!
I think this would only be an issue if the student dies before the parent repays the loan. At that point, there must be some way to provide death cert and name change info to cancel the debt.