2019 Lawyers of the Year: Francis C. Morrissey, Morrissey, Wilson & Zafiropoulos.

Byline: Margaret Field

Unmanageable student debt has been the talk of the town lately, with a number of the 2020 presidential candidates offering detailed plans on how to address the pressing issue.

While the Bankruptcy Code provides for the discharge of student debt upon demonstration of "undue hardship" for a student borrower and dependents, the bar to student loan discharge is dauntingly high.

No one knows that better than Francis C. Morrissey, co-chair of the Massachusetts Bar Association's Student Loan Bankruptcy Assistance Project. Last year the Braintree lawyer, through the pro bono program, represented the debtor in In Re: Schatz, Audrey Eve, winning the Great Barrington single mother relief while making new law in the field.

Morrissey's client had attended law school in an effort to make a better life for herself and her daughter, taking out loans to pay for her studies. Despite suffering from several medical conditions, she graduated and passed the bar. But her job search failed to yield employment, so she took cleaning and other odd jobs in an attempt to make ends meet. Meanwhile, her medical challenges worsened. In 2017, the balance on her student loans stood at roughly $110,000.

Schatz had already received a Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharge when she sought a discharge of her student loans under 523(a)(8) of the Bankruptcy Code, asserting that repaying the loans would pose an undue hardship and render her unable to maintain a minimal standard of living. The request was denied, with the Bankruptcy Court judge noting that the equity in her home, estimated at $125,000, could be used to pay the student loans in full.

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"The law has recognized for hundreds and hundreds of years that we don't let creditors get everything, like the clothes on your back."

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The 1st Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel determined, however, that the home equity could not be the sole basis on which to deny discharge of her student loan debt and remanded the case.

The initial decision had threatened to erode a longstanding principle of bankruptcy law: that debtors get a "fresh start" by liquidating non-exempt assets while retaining certain exempt assets, like their homestead, to take care of themselves and their families.

"She's out from under the debt; she got the relief she sought," Morrissey proudly says of his client.

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Q. How did you come to take this case?

A. I helped start the Massachusetts Bar Association's Student Loan Bankruptcy...