I took out private loans through the lending institution American Education Services/National Collegiate Trust back in 2006, while I was an XXXX student at XXXX XXXX XXXX University in XXXX XXXX, CA. The initial amount of the loans was approximately {$57000.00} ( current remaining balance is approximately {$46000.00} ). The loans remained in a deferred status during the remaining part of my education as an XXXX student at XXXX and throughout my XXXX education at XXXX University in XXXX, PA. Upon graduating from XXXX school, the loans qualified for the 6 month grace period. Although I was employed within 6 months of graduation, I requested several consecutive deferment and forbearance periods due to the fact that my total salary was not sufficient to make minimum payments while supporting a family of XXXX. I have XXXX children, and at the time, I was married, and my spouse was unemployed. Upon finally entering repayment, my original minimum payments were approximately $ XXXX/month. After my spouse returned to full-time employment, this was a payment that our family could afford without being placed into a financial hardship type of situation. However, after 6 months, AES notified me that they were going to be ballooning my minimum monthly payment to over $ XXXX/month ( approximately $ XXXX/month ). I was very clear with AES that, if they took this action on my loans, this would certainly pose a financial hardship for my family, as we could not afford that amount for a minimum payment. AES persisted in taking this action anyhow, and my private loans subsequently entered default status. I continued to make the $ XXXX monthly payment even after my loans entered a default status to show that I was making a good faith effort to repay my loans. This action did nothing, however, to prevent or reverse the status of my loans going into default. I had not been in a financial position to repay the loans for quite some time post-graduation from school, and when I finally got to a point where I could repay my loans, AES only accepted 6 months worth of payments before ballooning my minimum payments. AES was not in any way concerned about impacting my credit and sending the loans into a default status. This has had an incredible impact on me and my family, personally, as now I am divorced and was allocated ALL of my student debt in the final divorce settlement ( this amount totals over {$200000.00} as it includes BOTH my private and federal student loans ), and financially, as the consequences to my credit means that I have a difficult time qualifying for purchases I may need to make in the future, such as purchasing a home or a vehicle. These loans are currently being managed by a collections agency, and the loans have been turned over several times to several different collections agencies since entering default.