<prompt> Human: Let me preface this by saying Im not a sob story, nor am I the most extreme case here, but I came here for strategic advice. Im a late 20s male with a good job and just got married a couple of months ago. I came from a well-off background, while she grew up firmly middle class. I knew her parents had a good amount of debt...but they opened the kimono to us and I am floored. They somehow managed to rack up 231k in student debt for her undergrad only, 131k for her sister, and have 350k on their mortgage. Oh, and the student loans are at 8.They are handing off the 231k to us because hey are struggling. 44k of it is a parent plus loan in their name, and the other two loans 88k and 98k are direct unsubsidized consolidated loans in their name. I have 200k savings in stocks. My wife has 8k cash. Therein lies the problem. From my research, Ive learned that we can refinance the 44k parent plus loan through Sofi in my wifes name and i can pay that off basically immediately. But how do I pay the remaining 190k without incurring a gift tax? Also, is there any feasible way to refinance? Is there a tax-efficient way to do this? Does it make sense to use all my savings and try to wipe this out immediately? I dont want to try to outperform 8 annually.Thanks so much in advance for any advice. This is not a fun surprise.UPDATE: As per ualh9h suggestion, I checked the National Student Loan Database, and indeed, one of those loans, the 88k one, is in her name. Fail: The astonishingannoying thing here is that my wife did go to grad school starting fall 2011 for a year, but she took out a private 31k loan to pay for it which she has been diligently paying down. Were going to confront them this evening to get the facts.  <response>: so all this was secret from you by your new wife...why do you think its YOUR problem? 