I got married and it's impacted on DS loan

[mumzof4x]

So I had 4 dc all with their biological father
Divorced after 25 years
I have worked incredibly hard since . Built up my career on. my own and seen one through uni now teaching / one several years into medicine and ds on year 4 at uni
Their biological father has never contributed one single penny and it nearly broke me but it was worth it. They are great kids and I'm so proud I could do that for them.
I met a man a few years ago and with their blessing we married recently.
Admittedly he's helped dd with her medicine sometimes but that's because he wanted to not needed to
DS put that I am now married on his student finance this year because I am but dh is not his father
He's really upset because he's got £4K for the entire year
I've just finally reduced my hours a bit because dd has additional needs and I need tk be here a bit more
All the other dc always got the max amount they needed which helped tbh . I still had to top them up but not like this
DS got the max the last two years amd all that's changed is I got married
This year has been a struggle as his internship in Oxford overlapped with his final year at uni elsewhere and is costing £3k in double rent
His bills and rent at uni this year are 800 a month and he will have 400 at most
That means I will have to find £600 a month.
We are just buying our first house together and this means we now cannot
I had no idea they would expect my husband to financially support him ? Apparently he had to provide his NI number so they will his salary details and everything
I would have waited until he'd finished uni and never married but it just seemed the right time
Would there be any chance of an appeal? I feel so bad because on my own I have always provided for them and now this.
Any advice would be much appreciated and thank you .

How do people not know this?! It's been based off household income for years! There's threads posted on MN every year on this topic. It's been on the news, it's on Martin Lewis' MSE website, it's been on TV plenty of times over the years, it's information that's readily available.

"But I've been living under a rock for years"

It's written on the bloody form! And the guidance notes on the Student Finance website.

Household means humans who live in a property together. It doesn't just mean one adult.

Did you include partner/husband when you filled in the form for the census?

Is he on your council tax bill?

Same here
Me - My mum was a single mum of three, low paid job- I received a low grant
Uni friend- BMW driving, wealthy parents with own business- mother did not ‘work’- he received full grant

The system has never been fair

I used to work with someone who very carefully made sure he never earned enough to pay it. He lost out on so much and last time I heard he was still living in a HMO. Seemed pretty miserable to me.

He's doing it wrong then. You can earn well over the threshold as long as it's via multiple income streams.

https://www.gov.uk/repaying-your-student-loan/what-you-pay

I rolled my eyes and moved past that ridiculous post. Some people are just clueless idiots.

I agree with some of the pp that it's a bloody difficult job to create a system which works fairly for all, and of course a big part of the problem is that everyone and his dog seems to go to uni these days. The entire system needs restructuring so that young people who aren't particularly academic and who would never have even thought of applying to uni several decades ago don't have this pressure that they've got to get a degree.

That said, given the current situation, it's yet another example of perverse incentives. Dh and I both work full time, in professional but not high paying careers. We had 2 adult offspring in uni at the same time, each got minimum maintenance loan and it was pretty crippling those years when we had to top up both to the tune of hundreds every month. The irony that if dh and I sat on our arses and didn't work, or reduced to part time working, our kids would have got more money, was not lost on us. Our kids both had to earn in pt jobs throughout uni too, while some of their friends on max loans didn't.

Also, the loan only needs to be paid back once a certain earning threshold is reached.
So you could have 2 students, one on minimum and one on maximum loan who both never reach the threshold. Student on max loan will never pay anything back, loan will eventually get written off. Meanwhile, the parents who had to top up the student on minimum loan never get that money paid back....

Shite system.

Maybe he couldn't get other jobs to fit in.

Doesn't have to be a job. Works the same way with self employment. It may be that there's something else specific to his circumstances that mean he struggles, but it's worth people knowing that actually, avoiding repayments doesn't mean having to keep your income low.

Well his openly declared intention was that he didn't intend to pay a penny of his student loan back. Maybe he didn't have any marketable skills to be self employed, maybe living in a grotty HMO ruled out some possibilities. All I know is he is approaching 50, hasn't paid off any of his loan and doesn't intend to. Maybe he will suddenly become incredibly dynamic and make a fortune when he's 50.

There's always OnlyFans lmao.

But if you're bothered enough about his circumstances to make multiple posts about them, by all means send him the above link.

That’s disappointing; you will have to postpone the house purchase, increase your hours again, your son can get a job after the internship?

How much was he getting before? How many more years left?

It is really expensive to study away from home in this country. I think more kids will start looking at local universities like in other countries. With the cost of living is becoming more difficult.

I am definitely not saying it’s a usual situation at all. I had been living alone as I was no longer welcome at either of my parents properties so had no choice. Being self sufficient and earning as much as possible in a bar six nights a week and juggling uni was not easy, without that loan I wouldn’t have been able to go to uni in the first place.

Lots of parents and step parents do and should help out, why be in the child’s/young adults life if you won’t support them. I was one of the first years to go with extortionate fees, so unfortunately it wasn’t the norm for parents to have to help anyway. No one in my family had been to uni before me.

It seems unfair that they expect your dh to contribute but not your ds own father. How comes they aren't expecting his father to contribute?

Way SFE is set up only household income counts. There’s no requirement for none resident parent to contribute and any maintenance will stop as dc is 18 and an adult.
Some none resident parents will contribute directly to yp but there’s no legal requirement to.
It’s a very unfair system.

I replied to comments. What a snarky post.

If you saw him you wouldn't think he'd make much on OnlyFans. I think it would be a bit of a niche market.

Actually I just counted, I'd made 3 posts about it and you made 3. How bothered about it are you, you don't even know him.