A Villanova law professor said many student debt cases do show a hardship and can be erased by a bankruptcy court judge, writes Kathleen Struck for voanews.com.

A  judge recently ruled in favor of a law school graduate who asked to have $220,000 in student debt erased.

Most students are under the impression, or get bad legal advice, that student debt cannot be relieved in bankruptcy court.

But Jason Iuliano, an expert in student debt and assistant professor of law at Villanova University found that wasn’t true.

“What I found when I actually went in and collected the cases was a lot of folks actually do meet the [undue hardship] test,” he said. “About 40 percent of the student loan debtors in bankruptcy … are successful in getting a discharge of some sort. And that struck me as really important.”

Iuliano said about 250,000 student debtors file for bankruptcy each year. But only about 500 file for an adversary proceeding to address college-loan specific debt.

“A lot more people should be filing and trying to prove undue hardship, because they would be successful if they actually came before a judge,” Iuliano advised.

Read more bankruptcy court forgiveness of student debt here.

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