In an article about what happens to people who try to get a judge to discharge their student loans in bankruptcy court, I told the story of Doug Wallace, a blind man in Ohio in the middle of his own case. He's trying to prove that paying his debt would cause an “undue hardship,†according to the governing legal standard. To do so, he needs to prove, among other things, that there is a “certainty of hopelessness†that he will be unable to pay his debt during the term of the loans.
Last week, he had his latest hearing in front of C. Kathryn Preston, the federal bankruptcy judge overseeing his case. She set Jan. 28, 2013, as the date for a new mini-trial to discuss medical issues that have arisen (in cluding a hernia and problems with his fingers) in the last two years. He'll also have to discuss whether he has made any effort to find work or attempted to get any additional assessment of whether he's employable.
