Recourse for a Parent Taking Out Student Loans in Your Name

Attorney Answer

This is harder than a straightforward identity theft discharge. The federal discharge rules you are probably thinking of are built around what the school did, not what your parent did — and because you actually enrolled, a discharge is not a given.

Federal regulations do allow a Direct Loan to be discharged where the school falsely certified the borrower's eligibility, including where the school certified eligibility as a result of identity theft committed against that person (34 C.F.R. § 685.215(a)(1)(v)). A closely related ground covers loans where the school itself signed the borrower's name on the application or promissory note without authorization (34 C.F.R. § 685.215(a)(1)(iii)). Read those carefully: every ground in that section is predicated on school conduct. A parent forging a child's signature or misusing disbursed funds is not, standing alone, what the rule addresses.

That distinction matters on your facts. You enrolled and attended. The problem you describe is not that the school was deceived about who you were — it is that your parent controlled and spent the money once it was disbursed. That is a real wrong, but it is not the wrong this discharge regulation was built to fix, at least not by itself.

Separately, what you describe may be a crime. California makes it an offense to willfully obtain another person's identifying information and use it, without consent, for an unlawful purpose — expressly including obtaining credit (Cal. Penal Code § 530.5(a)). Taking out loans in your name and spending the proceeds on her own expenses fits that description. But be clear about what pursuing it means: it is a criminal report against your own parent, and a criminal case does not by itself move the debt into her name. That is a separate track from fixing the loans.

Finally, this regulation reaches only federal Direct Loans. If any of these are private loans, or Parent PLUS loans (which are legally the parent's own obligation, not yours), the analysis is different from the start. Find out exactly what you have before assuming this framework applies at all.

What you can do

1. Pull your full federal loan record at studentaid.gov to confirm which loans exist, whose name each is in, and what type each one is. 2. Gather records of your actual costs versus the amounts borrowed, along with anything showing you did not authorize the applications. 3. Contact your school's financial aid office to learn what it certified and when, since the discharge grounds turn on the school's role. 4. Consult a student loan attorney or a nonprofit student loan counseling service about whether any discharge, forbearance, or repayment relief realistically applies to your specific loans. 5. Before deciding whether to report a family member under the identity theft statute, talk the consequences through with someone — it is a serious and separate step from resolving the debt.