How to Fill Out and Submit an Edfinancial Student Loan Deferment Form

To pause payments on federal loans serviced by Edfinancial, you complete an Edfinancial student loan deferment form that matches your specific situation, attach any required proof, and return it to Edfinancial by upload, mail, or fax. There isn’t one universal form. Each deferment category has its own request document with its own eligibility questions, so the first real decision is picking the right one.

Pick the Deferment Category That Fits Your Situation

Federal law sets out several deferment categories, and you can only qualify under one at a time. Submitting the wrong form is the most common reason a request gets denied.

In-school deferment applies if you’re enrolled at least half-time at an eligible school. In most cases your school reports enrollment and the deferment posts automatically, so you may not need to file anything. If your payments haven’t paused, contact your school’s registrar or submit the In-School Deferment Request with the registrar’s certification.¹
Unemployment deferment is for borrowers receiving state unemployment benefits or actively seeking full-time work without success. The cumulative cap is 36 months for Direct Loan borrowers.²
Economic hardship deferment covers borrowers receiving means-tested public assistance or earning below 150 percent of the federal poverty guideline for their family size. It’s granted in one-year increments up to 36 cumulative months.³
Military service and post-active duty deferment applies to active-duty service during a war, military operation, or national emergency, and extends 180 days past qualifying service.⁴
Cancer treatment deferment covers active treatment and the six months after it ends, with no fixed time limit.⁵
Graduate fellowship deferment is for borrowers with a bachelor’s degree accepted into a full-time fellowship program that provides at least six months of financial support.⁶
Parent PLUS borrower deferment applies to Direct or Federal PLUS Loans first disbursed on or after July 1, 2008, while the student the parent borrowed for is enrolled at least half-time, plus six months after the student drops below half-time.⁷

If none of these fit, forbearance is the fallback. It pauses payments too, but interest accrues on every loan type, so deferment is usually the cheaper option when you qualify.⁸

Where to Download the Form

All of these request forms are available at the Edfinancial forms page and at the Federal Student Aid forms library on StudentAid.gov.⁹ Some deferment types can also be completed and submitted electronically through StudentAid.gov. If that option is available for your form, the Edfinancial forms page notes it next to the download link.

Filling Out the Form

Every deferment request follows the same three-part structure. Only the eligibility questions in the middle change.

Borrower Information

You’ll enter your Social Security number, date of birth, full legal name, mailing address, phone numbers, and email. There’s no account number field. Your SSN is what Edfinancial uses to match the request to your loans.¹⁰ Check that your name and SSN match what Edfinancial already has on file. If your contact information changed, mark the box at the top of the section that flags updated information.

Eligibility Questions

Read this section slowly. A wrong answer here can disqualify a genuinely eligible request. A few specifics that catch people out:

On the unemployment form, if you’re receiving benefits you attach proof and skip to the signature section. If you’re not on benefits but are job-seeking, you have to confirm at least six diligent attempts to find full-time work in the past six months, and you must be registered with a public or private employment agency within 50 miles of your address.²
On the economic hardship form, you can qualify by documenting means-tested benefits such as TANF, SSI, or SNAP, or by showing income below 150 percent of the poverty guideline for your family size and state. The form lets you report monthly income either as gross taxable income from all sources or as one-twelfth of the AGI from your most recent tax return. Use whichever is lower, and attach proof.³
On the military form, your service must be tied to a war, contingency operation, or national emergency. Active duty outside those contexts doesn’t qualify under this particular deferment.⁴
On the graduate fellowship form, an authorized official from the fellowship program has to certify eligibility in the certification section, or you can submit separate documentation from the program covering the same information.⁶

Signature and Any Required Certification

The signature section is where you formally request the deferment and acknowledge the terms, including how interest is handled. The form will not be processed unsigned.

Several deferment types also require a third-party certification: the registrar for in-school, an authorized military official for military service, the fellowship program for graduate fellowship, and the student’s school for Parent PLUS. If your form has a certification block, it has to be completed. An uncertified form comes back to you.

Submitting to Edfinancial

You have three ways to return the completed form. The fastest is to scan it and upload it through your online account at the Edfinancial borrower portal.⁹

To mail it, send the form and any supporting documents to:

Edfinancial Services
P.O. Box 36008
Knoxville, TN 37930-6008

To fax it, use the toll-free number 800-887-6130 or 865-692-6348.⁹ A fax gives you a transmission confirmation, which is useful proof of delivery if you don’t want to wait on postal mail. Whichever route you take, keep a copy of the completed form and every attachment.

After You Submit

Edfinancial reviews the form and documentation and then notifies you, either by mail or through your online account, that the deferment has been approved or explaining why it was denied.¹¹ Keep making your regular payments in the meantime. If you stop paying before the deferment is officially approved and it ends up denied, those months count as delinquent.

Once the deferment posts, log in and confirm the next scheduled payment date reflects the pause you requested, and that every loan you expected to be deferred actually is. If the dates are wrong, or only some of your loans got deferred, call Edfinancial rather than waiting until the next bill.

Know What Deferment Does to Your Balance

Pausing payments doesn’t always pause interest. Interest doesn’t accrue on Direct Subsidized Loans or Subsidized Stafford Loans during deferment because the government covers it. Interest keeps accruing on unsubsidized loans throughout, including Direct Unsubsidized, Unsubsidized Stafford, PLUS, and Consolidation Loans with unsubsidized balances.⁸

When the deferment ends, any unpaid interest on unsubsidized loans capitalizes: it’s added to your principal, and future interest is calculated on that larger figure. A $10,000 unsubsidized balance that accrues $340 in interest during a six-month deferment becomes $10,340 in principal afterward.¹² You can prevent capitalization by paying the accrued interest before the deferment ends, even though payments aren’t required during the pause.

If You’re Aiming at PSLF

Months in deferment don’t count as qualifying payments toward the 120 needed for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, even if you were working for a qualifying employer the whole time. The PSLF Buyback program lets you retroactively purchase credit for deferment months worked at a qualifying employer, but you have to make a lump-sum payment for those months.¹³ If you can afford an income-driven payment instead, a $0 IDR payment counts toward the 120 while a deferment month doesn’t.

Defaulted Loans Aren’t Eligible

If your federal loans are already in default, you can’t get a deferment. Default cuts off deferment, forbearance, and repayment plan options until you rehabilitate the loan, which typically means making an agreed series of payments over several months to bring it back into good standing.

Renewing or Extending

Most deferments have a cumulative cap and some require reapplication. Economic hardship is granted a year at a time, so you have to file again with fresh proof of eligibility to continue past twelve months, up to the 36-month cumulative maximum.³ Unemployment deferment carries the same 36-month cap for Direct Loan borrowers, with a 24-month cap for FFEL loans first disbursed before July 1, 1993.¹⁴ Note your deferment’s end date and file any renewal paperwork well ahead of it, not in the final week.

1
Federal Student Aid. In-School Deferment
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Federal Student Aid. Unemployment Deferment Request
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Federal Student Aid. Economic Hardship Deferment Request
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Federal Student Aid. Military Service and Post-Active Duty Student Deferment Request
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Federal Student Aid. Deferment for Cancer Treatment for Direct Loan, FFEL, and Perkins Loan Program Borrowers
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Federal Student Aid. Graduate Fellowship Deferment Request
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Federal Student Aid. Parent PLUS Borrower Deferment Request
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Federal Student Aid. Get Temporary Relief: Deferment and Forbearance
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Edfinancial Services. Forms
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Federal Student Aid. In-School Deferment Request
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Edfinancial Services. Frequently Asked Questions
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Federal Student Aid. Interest Capitalization
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Federal Student Aid. Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Buyback
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Federal Student Aid. Unemployment Deferment Request