<prompt> Human: She owed 30k in Student Loans from before we met, but now that we are married we file a joint tax return - and the entire refund amount gets taken to apply towards the student loan. The past few years, I havent really cared about it - since we would only get a couple of hundred dollars back at most. But now, this year will be the first time I am filing a joint return since we have had children - and we should be getting quite a large refund. Is there anything I can do to get the full refund back this year? I looked into filing separately with the children on my return, but that cuts the refund amount by around 75 doing that. Not sure why, but thats what Turbo Tax says  <response>: Its not that she has student loans, its that she defaulted on them. She needs to contact the department of education and attempt to get out of default. This will probably mean making monthly payments to pay them off. She may be eligible for income based repayment or something like that, but she probably has to make at least one normal payment first. 