If you can’t make your federal student loan payments, you have three approved ways to stop them without defaulting: deferment, forbearance, and a zero-dollar payment under an income-driven repayment plan. In narrower circumstances, you may qualify to have the debt discharged entirely. Knowing how to stop student loan payments without defaulting comes down to matching your situation — your loan type, your income, how long you need relief, and whether you’re chasing forgiveness — to the option that costs you the least and protects the progress you’ve already made.
Why You Can’t Just Stop Paying
A federal student loan becomes delinquent the day after you miss a payment, and your servicer reports that delinquency to the credit bureaus. After roughly 270 days of missed payments, the loan goes into default. That’s when the real damage starts.
The federal government can garnish up to 15% of your disposable pay without a court order. It can seize your federal tax refunds and offset a portion of your Social Security benefits. Your credit score drops sharply. You lose eligibility for further federal student aid. The entire unpaid balance, with interest, becomes due immediately, and collection costs can add up to 24% of the outstanding balance on top of what you already owe. Every option below exists so you never get there. Apply for one before you miss a payment, not after.
Deferment: The Cheapest Pause When You Qualify
Deferment is the most borrower-friendly pause because, on Direct Subsidized Loans and Subsidized Consolidation Loans, the government pays your interest while you’re not paying. Unsubsidized loans and PLUS loans still accrue interest, but the qualifying categories give you a legal right to the pause — your servicer can’t decline it if you meet the conditions.
In-School Deferment
Enrolled at least half-time at an eligible school? Payments stop for as long as you stay enrolled. Schools usually report enrollment to servicers automatically, but confirm the deferment posted. Medical and dental interns and residents don’t qualify here (dental residencies are the narrow exception) and should look at mandatory forbearance instead.
Unemployment Deferment
If you’ve lost your job and are actively looking for full-time work, you can defer for up to three years total. You’ll need proof of eligibility for unemployment benefits, or a certification that you’ve registered with an employment agency within 50 miles of your address. After the first six months, each renewal requires showing at least six serious attempts to find full-time work over the prior six months.
Economic Hardship Deferment
Up to three years total if you receive federal or state public assistance like SNAP or SSI, or your monthly income doesn’t exceed the greater of the federal minimum wage or 150% of the poverty guideline for your family size. In 2026 that threshold works out to about $23,940 for an individual or $49,500 for a family of four in the contiguous states.
Military Service Deferment
Active-duty service members during a war or national emergency, and National Guard members deployed or serving full-time during such periods, can defer for the entire duration of service plus 180 days afterward. That post-service window gives you time to resettle before payments resume.
Cancer Treatment Deferment
Payments stop during the full course of treatment and for six months after it ends, with no fixed limit. A physician certifies the treatment, and the initial certification covers up to 12 months; if treatment runs longer, the physician files a new certification and the deferment continues. Perkins Loan borrowers get an additional six-month post-deferment grace period on top of that six-month post-treatment window.
Graduate Fellowship Deferment
Hold a bachelor’s degree and participating full-time in a Department of Education–approved graduate fellowship, including programs like Fulbright grants? You can defer for the length of the program, provided the fellowship gives at least six months of financial support and requires periodic progress reports.
Forbearance: Broader Access, Higher Cost
If you don’t qualify for deferment, forbearance is the backup. Interest accrues on all loan types, so it costs more over the life of the loan. There are two flavors.
Discretionary Forbearance
Your servicer decides. Financial hardship, illness, or other circumstances that temporarily prevent payment can qualify. Each period runs up to 12 months and can be renewed while the hardship continues, though you’ll reapply and update documentation each time.
Mandatory Forbearance
The servicer must grant it if you meet one of the qualifying conditions, regardless of how it reads your finances:
- Your total monthly federal student loan payments equal or exceed 20% of your total monthly gross income.
- You’re in a medical or dental internship or residency program.
- You were activated by a governor as a National Guard member but don’t qualify for military deferment.
Interest still accrues the same way it does in discretionary forbearance. The difference is that you don’t need approval, only proof.
Natural Disaster Forbearance
If you’re affected by a federally declared disaster, your servicer can grant administrative forbearance for up to three months. Interest accrues, but servicers usually move quickly because the trigger is a FEMA declaration. Contact yours as soon as you can.
Zero-Dollar Income-Driven Repayment
Income-driven repayment plans set your monthly payment based on income and family size. When your income is low enough, the calculation produces a $0 payment. You owe nothing that month, but you’re still technically in active repayment, and that matters: every $0 month counts toward IDR forgiveness and toward PSLF.
The threshold that produces a $0 payment depends on the plan. IBR and PAYE use 150% of the federal poverty guideline — about $23,940 for a single borrower in the contiguous states in 2026. ICR uses 100% of the guideline, or $15,960 for an individual in 2026. The SAVE plan is currently unavailable due to litigation and is on track to be eliminated by Congress by July 2028.
Forgiveness timelines vary by plan. PAYE forgives the remaining balance after 20 years of qualifying payments. IBR is 20 years if you first borrowed on or after July 1, 2014, and 25 years otherwise. ICR is 25 years. A $0 month counts toward each of these.
Don’t Miss Recertification
IDR plans require you to recertify income and family size every year, even if nothing has changed. Miss the deadline and your payment jumps to what you’d owe under a standard 10-year plan based on your balance when you first enrolled in IDR, and any unpaid interest that accrued during the year capitalizes onto your principal. You can get back to income-based payments by submitting a new IDR application, but the capitalized interest stays.
How Interest Actually Adds Up
The cost of pausing payments depends on which option you pick and what type of loans you hold.
In deferment, Direct Subsidized Loans and Subsidized Consolidation Loans don’t accrue interest. Direct Unsubsidized Loans, PLUS Loans, and their consolidation counterparts do, and that unpaid interest capitalizes when the deferment ends.
In forbearance, interest accrues on every loan type. Under current rules, interest that accrues during forbearance is not capitalized when the forbearance ends. You’ll still owe it, but it doesn’t get folded into principal automatically.
On a $30,000 unsubsidized loan at 5%, a 12-month forbearance adds roughly $1,500 in interest. If that interest capitalizes, you start paying interest on interest, and the balance grows faster than most borrowers expect. When deferment on subsidized loans is available, it’s the cheaper stop.
When the Debt Should End, Not Pause
Some situations qualify you to have the loan wiped out entirely.
Total and Permanent Disability Discharge
If a physical or mental condition has prevented you from working for at least 60 continuous months, or is expected to last that long or result in death, you can have your federal loans discharged. Verification can come from the Social Security Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs for service-connected disabilities, or a licensed physician, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, or certified psychologist. In some cases the Department of Education identifies qualifying borrowers through VA or SSA data and discharges loans without an application. The old three-year post-discharge income monitoring rule has been eliminated; the only reinstatement risk now is taking out new federal student loans, including Parent PLUS Loans, within three years of the discharge.
Closed School Discharge
If your school closed while you were enrolled, or within 180 days after you withdrew, your loans for that program can be discharged. The Department of Education may extend the 180-day window in exceptional circumstances.
False Certification Discharge
Your loans can be discharged if the school improperly certified your eligibility to borrow: certifying you without a valid high school diploma when you didn’t meet alternative eligibility, signing loan documents without your authorization, falsifying your credentials, or someone using your identity to obtain the loan fraudulently. It also applies when the school enrolled you in a program that couldn’t lead to employment in your state due to a criminal record, age, physical condition, or another disqualifying factor the school should have caught.
Bankruptcy Discharge
Student loans can be discharged in bankruptcy, but only by proving “undue hardship” for you and your dependents. Most courts apply the Brunner test; some use a broader totality-of-the-circumstances test. It’s a difficult path, but not the impossibility many borrowers assume, and successful discharges do happen.
If You’re Working Toward PSLF
Public Service Loan Forgiveness requires 120 qualifying monthly payments while working full-time for a qualifying employer. Months in deferment or forbearance generally don’t count. The exception is the COVID-era administrative forbearance, which counts automatically.
The Department of Education’s PSLF Buyback program lets you retroactively purchase months spent in deferment or forbearance after 2007. You pay what you would have owed during those months and they count toward your 120. You need 120 months of qualifying employment already, and the buyback has to actually result in forgiveness for you to be eligible.
The takeaway if you’re on the PSLF track: a zero-dollar IDR payment almost always beats forbearance. The $0 payment counts. Forbearance doesn’t.
The Tax Bill Waiting at the End of IDR
The American Rescue Plan Act temporarily excluded forgiven student loan debt from federal taxable income, but that provision expired at the end of 2025. Starting in 2026, a balance forgiven under an IDR plan is generally treated as taxable income by the IRS. On a $50,000 forgiven balance, that can mean a five-figure tax bill in the year forgiveness occurs.
There are exceptions. PSLF forgiveness is permanently excluded from taxable income under IRC Section 108(f)(1). Total and Permanent Disability discharges are also currently excluded. If you’re insolvent when forgiveness happens — total debts exceeding the fair market value of total assets — you can exclude the forgiven amount up to the extent of your insolvency by filing Form 982 with your tax return.
Borrowers close to IDR forgiveness should start setting money aside years ahead. Small monthly amounts in a dedicated savings account beat facing the whole bill at once.
How to Apply
Everything starts with your loan servicer, the company that sends your monthly bill. You’ll need your FSA ID, your Social Security number, and your most recent federal tax return, since Adjusted Gross Income drives the calculations for IDR and economic hardship.
The form depends on the relief you’re seeking. Deferment requests, forbearance applications, and IDR enrollment forms are on StudentAid.gov and on your servicer’s website. Disability-related requests need a physician’s certification. Unemployment deferment needs proof of unemployment benefits or a certification that you’ve registered with an employment agency. Fill in every field; incomplete applications are the most common cause of delay.
Most servicers accept forms through their online portal. You should get a confirmation within a few business days, and full review generally takes 30 to 60 days. During processing, your servicer may place your account on administrative forbearance so you’re not penalized while you wait. Watch your account and respond immediately to any request for more documentation. Letting one sit unanswered is the fastest way to have your application denied or your account slip into delinquency.
Private Loans Play by Different Rules
Everything above applies to federal student loans only. Private student loans from banks, credit unions, or other private lenders carry no federally guaranteed right to deferment, forbearance, or income-driven repayment. Some private lenders run hardship programs, but each lender sets its own terms, and those terms are typically less generous than the federal options. Call your lender to ask what’s available, and keep paying until you have written confirmation that any relief has been granted.