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You borrowed for a degree you are still paying for, and now a divorce petition has put that balance on the table. Most people assume a student loan belongs to whoever signed for it. Florida law does not work that way, and the distance between what feels fair and what the statute actually says is where these cases get expensive. Our Orlando divorce attorneys work through this with clients across Orange, Osceola, and Seminole counties.
Marital or Nonmarital Turns on the Calendar
Florida classifies a debt by when it was incurred, not by who signed for it. Marital liabilities include liabilities incurred during the marriage, individually by either spouse or jointly by them. Liabilities incurred before the marriage sit on the nonmarital side and stay with the person who borrowed.
The line itself is fixed by statute. The cut-off date for classifying liabilities as marital is the earliest of three events:
- The date the parties enter a valid separation agreement;
- Another date that agreement expressly establishes; or,
- The date a petition for dissolution of marriage is filed.
Anything either spouse borrowed after the wedding and before that cut-off is presumed marital, and that presumption is overcome only by a showing that the liability is nonmarital.
Student loans complicate that tidy line, because they rarely arrive in one piece. A degree funded term by term can straddle the wedding date or the filing date, which raises a question the statute does not answer on its face: whether each disbursement is a separately incurred liability, or whether the whole obligation was incurred once, when the note was signed. Treat that as an argument to be made with documents rather than a settled rule. Pull the disbursement history, not just the current balance.
Spouses can also move a liability off the marital side by valid written agreement, which is why a prenuptial agreement, a postnuptial agreement, or the settlement agreement itself does more work here than most people expect.
How Florida Splits a Marital Student Loan
Once a loan is marital, the statute tells the judge where to begin. The court must start from the premise that the distribution should be equal, unless there is a justification for an unequal distribution based on all relevant factors. Equal is the starting point, not the ceiling and not the floor.
Several of the listed factors, or parts of them, read as though they were written for student debt:
- Any interruption of personal careers or educational opportunities of either party.
- The contribution of one spouse to the personal career or educational opportunity of the other spouse.
- The contribution of each spouse to the incurring of liabilities to the marital and nonmarital assets of the parties.
- The economic circumstances of the parties.
- The duration of the marriage.
Those factors cut in both directions. The spouse who worked while the other was in school has an argument, and so does the spouse who set a career aside to make the degree possible. In a contested case where no stipulation and agreement has been entered and filed, the judge must make specific written findings identifying each marital liability and designating which spouse is responsible for it. The allocation has to be written down and explained, not simply announced.
Why a Judge Might Not Split the Loan Down the Middle
Classification is usually the first fight and the shortest one, because the loan file answers most of it. The disbursement dates either fall inside the marriage or they do not. The longer fights are about what an equal split would actually mean once you look at what each spouse ended up holding.
The first of those fights is earning capacity. A student loan is unusual among marital debts because the thing it bought stays with one spouse. A spouse who now holds a professional license, and the income that came with it, is in a weak position to argue that the loan behind that license should be divided in half. Be clear about what is happening there. No Florida statute says the spouse who holds the degree pays more. What the statute does is set equal distribution as the starting point and then allow a court to move off that point based on all relevant factors, including the contribution one spouse made to the other’s career or educational opportunity and the economic circumstances of each party. Earning capacity is the argument that runs through those factors, not a rule that decides the case on its own.
The second fight is about timing at the end of the marriage. The statute lets a court weigh the intentional dissipation, waste, depletion, or destruction of marital assets after the petition is filed or within the two years before it. Read that carefully, because it reaches assets rather than liabilities. It does not make a loan taken out in the last year of a marriage nonmarital. What it does is let the court ask what happened to the money, which is why borrowing near the end of a marriage and the spending that followed it both draw attention.
What the Judgment Allocates, and What It Does Not
Once the court settles on a share, it still has to get there, and a loan cannot simply be handed to a different borrower. That is why an offset against another asset is a common way to reach the number. The statute also lets the court order a monetary payment, in a lump sum or in installments, to supplement or effectuate the division.
The statute directs the court to identify each marital liability and to designate which spouse is responsible for it. Read that carefully. It allocates responsibility between the two of you, in the dissolution proceeding.
Federal law shows how narrow that allocation can be. In the one federal setting we read for this article, an old joint consolidation loan, Congress addressed the question directly. When only one spouse receives a separate consolidation loan, the other borrower becomes solely liable for the remaining balance of the joint loan, an amount the Department of Education calculates as that borrower’s proportional share. The split there runs through a federal application, not through the Florida judgment.
The practical consequence is worth planning around. If your former spouse is ordered to pay a share and stops paying, the person who signed the promissory note is still a party to that note. The document you would be relying on is the family court order, not the loan contract. Build that risk into the settlement instead of discovering it two years later.
Refinancing, Consolidation, and What Each One Can Do
Refinancing is the tool people reach for when they want a name off a loan, and it is worth pricing before agreeing to a settlement term that assumes it will happen. A private refinance is a new contract with a new lender on that lender’s terms, and approval turns on the borrower’s credit and income rather than on the divorce.
Consolidation is a different animal, and it is where a divorce order does real work. Beginning on January 1, 1993 and ending on July 1, 2006, married borrowers could combine their federal loans into a single joint consolidation loan, and both agreed to be jointly liable for the full balance without regard to any later change in marital status.
Congress closed the program and left those couples locked together until a 2022 law gave them a way out. Under a joint application, the default split is proportional, but if both borrowers request it, the amounts are set by the proportions outlined in a divorce decree, court order, or settlement agreement, and a copy of that document goes in with each application.
That option exists only on a joint application. One borrower may apply alone, with the allocation staying proportional, if that borrower certifies any of the following:
- An act of domestic violence from the other borrower.
- Economic abuse from the other borrower.
- An inability to reasonably reach or access the other borrower’s loan information.
The Department of Education may also permit a separate application when doing so serves the best fiscal interests of the federal government. If either of you carries a loan from that era, the federal separation process belongs in the negotiation rather than in the cleanup afterward.
Talk With Us Before You Sign the Settlement Agreement
Student debt is one of the few items in a Florida divorce where the words in the agreement can reach the loan itself, and one of the many where the wrong words leave you paying for a degree you do not hold. Both of our founding attorneys are board certified in marital and family law by The Florida Bar. We handle family law and only family law, and we work through property and debt distribution for families across Central Florida.
Contact us to talk through what your settlement should say about student loans.
