What this is and is not.

When we publish a piece on income-driven repayment, default, garnishment, or bankruptcy, we are explaining how the system is built. We are not looking at your loans, your servicer’s notes on your account, your tax filing, your spouse’s situation, your state’s law, or the deadline you may already be running up against.

A general explanation of a rule is not the same thing as advice about whether — and how — that rule applies to you. The first is education. The second requires a lawyer who has reviewed your facts.

If you want advice, book a consultation. If you want to learn, keep reading.

No attorney-client relationship is formed by:

• Reading an article on tateesq.com
• Watching one of our videos
• Subscribing to our newsletter
• Sending us a message through a contact form
• Booking or attending a consultation
• Emailing or calling our office

We become your lawyers only when we agree in writing to represent you and you sign an engagement agreement. Until then, we are not your lawyers, and you are not our client. Anything you send us before that point is not protected the same way as a communication with retained counsel — though we treat inquiries with the confidentiality our professional rules require.

If you have a deadline, do not wait for our response. Get other counsel involved.

Stanley Tate is admitted to the Missouri Bar. He is also admitted to practice in the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern District of Missouri, the Western District of Missouri, and the District of Maryland.

We represent borrowers across the country on federal student loan matters because the underlying law is federal. For matters that require admission to a state bar or court where Stanley is not licensed, we associate with local counsel, seek pro hac vice admission, or refer the matter to qualified counsel in that state. State law on related issues — like garnishment procedures, contract claims, or community property — varies, and our content does not always flag every state-by-state difference.

We sometimes describe outcomes from real cases — discharge in an adversary proceeding, a successful PSLF buyback, a rehabilitation that pulled someone out of default. Each of those outcomes turned on the specific facts of that matter and the law in effect at the time. They are not guarantees, projections, or promises about what will happen in your case.

Different facts produce different results. So does a change in the law, in agency guidance, or in the position of a particular servicer.

If a page on this site shows a payment estimate, a forgiveness projection, an offset risk calculation, or any similar number, treat it as an estimate based on the inputs you entered and the rules as we understand them at the time the tool was built. The number is not a quote, a guarantee, or an authoritative determination from your servicer or the Department of Education.

Real numbers depend on real loan data — the kind that lives in your account, in your tax return, and in agency records. Confirm with your servicer or with us before relying on any calculator output for a decision.

A lot of student loan questions are also tax questions. Filing jointly versus separately changes IDR payments. Insolvency and the timing of forgiveness change tax liability. State conformity to federal forgiveness exclusions varies year to year.

We will explain how these issues interact with student loan rules. We will not tell you how to file your taxes or how to structure your finances. For that, work with a CPA or financial advisor who can review your full picture.

The legal landscape we write about moves. Statutes get passed. Regulations get published, withdrawn, and rewritten. Guidance changes. Court decisions reshape how the agencies apply rules. The article you read this morning may have been accurate when we published it and outdated by the time you finished reading.

We try to keep our content current and date-stamp anything time-sensitive. We don’t always catch every change instantly. If a date on an article is more than a few months old, double-check the rule before relying on it. Better yet, confirm with us or with current counsel.

When we are wrong, we fix it. See our Corrections Policy for how that works.

Some pages on this site link to student loan refinancing lenders through affiliate links. If you click through one of those links and end up refinancing with the lender, we may be paid a referral fee. That fee comes from the lender, not from you, and it does not change the rate or terms you are offered.

We disclose these relationships because the FTC requires us to and because you deserve to know. We don’t recommend a lender because they pay us. We discuss the lenders we discuss because borrowers ask about them.

Refinancing federal student loans converts them to private loans and gives up federal protections — income-driven repayment, forgiveness programs, generous deferment and forbearance, discharge for death and disability, and others. We explain the trade-offs in our refinancing content. The decision is yours, and it should not be made because of a chart on this site.

We link out to government sites, court opinions, news articles, academic papers, and other sources. We don’t control what those pages say or how they handle your information. When you leave tateesq.com, our policies stop applying and theirs start. Read carefully.

We use AI tools to help research, draft, and edit some of our content. A human attorney — usually Stanley — reviews everything we publish and is responsible for it. AI does not make publication decisions on this site. For more on how we use it, see our AI Policy.

If you want someone to look at your specific situation and tell you what to do, we offer paid consultations. Book one here.

If we cannot help — because of a conflict, a state we are not licensed in, or a matter outside our practice — we will tell you and, where possible, point you toward someone who can.

If you want to understand how Tate Esq operates as a publisher and as a law firm, the following pages explain it:

• Editorial Policy — how we decide what to publish and how we structure articles
• How We Research — where the facts come from and how we verify them
• AI Policy — how (and how much) AI is used in our work
• Corrections Policy — what happens when we get something wrong
• Privacy Policy — how we handle your information
• Terms of Service — the rules that govern your use of the site