Hard Lesson in Co-Signing

So I received this e-mail from Change.org reading:

Every time the bank calls me about my son's student loans, I relive the day I found out he was murdered. Donte was on a trip to visit his college town when a police officer called to tell us that he had been shot by the side of the road.

Then the calls started -- not condolence calls, but from debt collectors demanding we pay back Donte's student loans. All of a sudden my family not only had to deal with the police investigating Donte's murder, but with collectors constantly calling and reminding us of his death. Before my husband Bruce cosigned Donte's loans, we asked the lender to explain the terms. They never told us that we would be forced to take on our son's debt even if he died, which federal loan agencies don't force families to do.

[Original emphasis] While I certainly feel for the family with the loss of their son, I'm not sympathetic to their particular plight in regards to the loan they co-signed for. When one co-signs a loan one is just as responsible as the "primary" loan signer. In fact, you may as well consider yourself the primary loan signer because you have all the rights and responsibilities of one except that you do not make the payments.

I don't know whether these folks are telling the truth that they were never told the consequences of co-signing a loan but even if they weren't it was their responsibility to read over all the paperwork and get someone with their interest in mind to go over the paperwork if they didn't understand what they were reading.

This is about responsibility and everything in this e-mail shrieks "I did not do my due diligence and I want someone else to pay for it."

Certainly the bank has insurance and other means to write down the loss. That is their choice to go that route, but these folks don't even want to split the difference or make reduced payments for what was already taken out. Certainly if the money had not been used for tuition at that time, it could have been refunded by the school and returned to the lender. But to expect the lender to eat funds already used? That's not fair either.

In the end it's a sad situation for the family, but it certainly does not warrant a mass mailing to people they don't know asking them to pressure a bank to not enforce a contract the family willingly signed.

Lesson: Learn what it means to co-sign. Don't do it if you are not prepared to pay.