Just my story and a few questions

[Beth]

I last attended school on a Canada Student Loan in 1979. This was one year of University. During my second year, my marriage broke up and I returned to my parent’s home pregnant. I didn’t finish my second year and ended up using my wedding and engagement ring to buy formula before I gave up and went on Mothers Allowance.
Not wanting to do nothing while raising my son (in fact raising a child – alone - is light years past ‘nothing’), I looked into possibilities for a meaningful career and, as my natural parents had run a home-based group home, I began taking foster children. Not the kind of fostering wherein one waits on cute babies and raises them but the kind my parents had done – the teens and disabled children whom often get overlooked. Eventually, I specialized in being an open custody home for young offenders. I did make payments on my loan but, as most of my ‘income’ was designed to be recycled back into expenses directly related to the kids and their needs, and there were times I didn’t have a ‘full’ quota of children, I didn’t pay a lot and sometimes, I missed payments.
During high school, I had obtained an RPN and while at University and over the next few years, I worked on various independent contracts caring for people in their homes (Part-time). This continued through 2003 when home Nursing became scarce.
Eventually, I received notice that I was being taken to court. I obtained a legal aid lawyer and there was a judgement made against me (of course, it was my debt and I wasn’t paying it) During this time, no one mentioned debt reduction or interest relief. On one occasion, I sought advice from a credit counselor and was told to “ignore” the debt as, being on assistance, I was “judgement- proof”. I seriously could not have paid them anyway but, what about when I planned to improve my life and get back into the work force? In hindsight, this is a band-aid solution only.
Then the collections agencies started. I have read horror stories on this site and others and wonder how I survived but it passed. I do remember being sent ‘applications’ to prove that I was on social assistance – these applications were pages long and demanded numerous photocopies of supporting documentation – I wonder if they realize how many trees they were killing? This led to about 6 to 12 weeks of silence and then they would start again.
I often offered to pay amounts I could afford – but was rebuffed – not always politely. In retrospect, those payments would not even cover the interest.
In early 1996, I was in a car accident. My 11 year-old youngest son died on site despite an excellent response and medical care. My older, sixteen-year old son was not with us at the time.
I don’t remember too much about the 2 years following the accident. I did not cope well.
I didn’t foster again and ended up on full assistance. Unbeknownst to me, Mike Harris and his Government were in the process of marginalizing me and anyone else on assistance to the point that it would be virtually impossible to pay our bills, afford any kind of quality life and most importantly – ever get ourselves out of the cycle of poverty
I still kept hearing from collection agencies. I remember sometime in the period between 1996 and 1998 contacting the government by letter asking about either debt relief or interest relief while I was on assistance and at the suggestion of my family, filling out an application but I heard nothing back from them.
When I phoned them some years later, asking about these issues, I was told that they didn’t apply to my loan as it was too “old”.
In 1998, my father passed away. That same year, through my former professional life, I was offered the care of a special needs child. I ended up adopting him. He has been the light of my life since, along with my dear Grandchildren.
In 2000, my mother ended up moving in with me. She was mostly bedridden, on dialysis and needed full time care. (Yeah, there is a theme here, call me Florence). I cared for her until her death in 2007.
Sometime over the past few years, my Student Loan left the collections agencies and has resided with Human Resources and Social Development Canada. They send me invoices every month. I also receive a statement each year telling me that they can take my income tax and GST. In 2001, I was employed briefly (more than the part time incidental nursing) and when I filed the income taxes the following year found that all the Federal portion of my return was taken. I have not lost my GST – perhaps because I am low income. Each year, the Ontario portions of my income tax return are not touched – (which is basically what anyone on assistance gets) The only problem I have with my tax lien is that, like most people on assistance, I can not go into local tax offices and sell my income tax each November or December – that is how most of us (that I know) finance Christmas and/or winter heating. It would be great if I could do this.
In 2004 we experienced a severe flood throughout our city and I lost most of my papers and documents as we live in a basement apartment. The only papers I have right now relating to my student loan are the monthly statements I receive from Human Resources and Social Development Canada the latest one I can put my hands on right now is from January of 2009. It states the amount owing as $8145.51 and that I am paying $37.11 per month in interest. The minimum payment they want is $423.00 per month. A person would have to have the ultimate wonder job to pay that much less me. I don’t even remember what my loan was to begin with.
To further exacerbate my situation, just before her death, my mother and I were scammed into a contract with an energy reseller – after a 2 year nightmare, the local legal center and hundreds of dollars I couldn’t afford, I am just this month free of them.
I am finally able to breath a bit for the first time in years. Not that I have tons of money – anything but. I could not, at this point, afford to pay anyone anything. More often than not, if there is even one extra trip to the doctors or some extra unforeseen expense we either end up relying on family or the food bank.
Being on assistance means being in constant survival mode. That’s okay, I had 2 parents who survived the depression. If I have hope of improvement, I can get through it. It’s the being stuck that I can’t stand. I am 50. I never finished my education. I care for a child who has special needs. Lotteries notwithstanding, there are very few options open to me.
My son is now 10. He is special needs (ACSD). I homeschool him. He and my other children and my family are the light of my life. He has reached the stage wherein a good portion of his day is given to ‘self-directed’ instruction. He still needs care but not as much as before.
I went looking for something I could do, something that hopefully would enable me to be at home with him as much as possible and that I could cope with physically as there have been serious long term effects stemming from my car accident. Some years ago I began doing our family’s Genealogy as a hobby and it has branched out into doing not only my own but assisting with other families and a lot of independent research and transcribing for others. This is something I am good at and love doing. I can also do the majority of the work at home or accompanied by my son. I recently looked into acquiring my Board Certification and ended up taking one credit at the National Institute of Genealogical Studies affiliated with the University of Toronto (this is an online-correspondence course). I had to save for 9 months to pay the small fee for this course alone and the whole program is $2900 tuition. At that rate, I couldn’t finish the course until I was in my 60’s or 70’s. I would love to apply for an Ontario Special Bursary as I would have to approach this course part-time but it states specifically on the application that “if you have defaulted on a student loan, contact the Financial Aid Office of the institution you are planning to attend”
This is a problem for me. The Harris debacle in 96, made it acceptable to think of those on assistance as something ‘less’ than other citizens. Examples for me have been having landlords ask outright where my income comes from and when I am honest, either hang up or state “you can’t afford to live here” and then hang up.; having a pharmacist – when questioning what he saw as my over-use of insulin, state (quite publicly) that ‘when somebody else is paying for your prescriptions, of course they have the right to question how much you use’; having a furniture salesman ask me to leave partway through an (admittedly, really good) sales pitch when he established I was on assistance.
These are only a few examples. So the problem comes back to – I wish to return to the professional world. A lot of the focus in the professional world is in ‘appearances’. The social atmosphere in Professional Genealogy is quite often even more focused on appearances. To go to the actual institution I want to attend and to be identified as a person who a) is on assistance and b) defaulted on a prior student loan, would saddle me with a handicap even before I tried to step from student to professional.
My questions are; what can I do about the CSL? Can I get the tax lien removed? Can I somehow obtain the Bursary while I have the old Student Loan? How can I do this?
Another problem would be when I finished the course and began to establish myself professionally. This is not going to happen overnight and it is never going to be so successful that I can afford to pay over $400.00 a month for an old student loan. Is there any way of reducing those payments?
I am hoping that someone on this forum can point me to some answers. I cannot afford any services.
Thank You so much for listening
Beth