<prompt> Human: Right now I am engaged. My fiance and I both just graduated from law school - she has 200k in debt and I have 160k. She is working in biglaw and her starting salary is 160k with bonus potential. Im doing public interest and making 50k. She has refinanced her loans and will pay them off in about 3 years.Right now under the REPAYE program my monthly payments are 270. I still have 9 and a half years of payments to make before my loans are forgiven.Apparently under the REPAYE program, your monthly payments are calculated based on both you and your spouses income, regardless of your tax filing status. If I were to be married right now, my payments would increase 1550 per month, which is getting close to the monthly payment required to completely pay off the loan in 10 years.Additionally, both of our incomes will be increasing substantially in about a year, which is when we plan to be married. Ill be at approx 80k, while she will likely be over 200k. This will make our payments 2200month compared to 519month on just 80k.Either way, my payments would appear to increase 1300-1500 by simply being married to a high income partner.My other option is to get on one of the other income based repayment plans which would allow me calculate my payments based on my income only if we file taxes separately. The payments are slightly higher 15 of income instead of 10 but definitely not anywhere near the numbers above. My big issue with this strategy is that my research has shown that the dept of education is trying to simplify its income based repayment options and this new REPAYE is the first step, making me think that some of the other options will disappear over the next 10 years and I will be forced to calculate my spouses income on whatever payment plan becomes the bread and butter. I also have to consider the tax implications of married filing separately that I know very little about.My fiance certainly isnt happy with the idea of living together unmarried we would still do wedding ceremony, etc, just not be legally married. However, is the legal title and convenience really worth it considering how much it will cost over the next 9 years?  <response>: Is there a reason why after her loans are paid off in 3 years you cant use the money she wont be paying out any more to her loans and put it towards your loans? Or, what do the numbers look like if you combine your incomes now and get on the standard 10 year plan for both of you? Then it wouldnt matter if youre married or not and you could potentially use the extra income when you get your raises and pay them off even sooner. Seems to me like, based on the information you provided, its going to take you 10 years to pay off both loans, regardless of the payment plan, so take 10 years and in the meantime it doesnt matter if youre married or not. 