<prompt> Human: So, my girlfriend and I graduated college about a year ago. Like most people, we took out student loans, her more than me. To put it simply, she payed almost nothing out of pocket for her education; she did work study, but the bulk of the money came from loans. Well, a big chunk of that was ParentPlus loans taken out by her mother. Im sure you can guess where this is going. My girlfriends mother told her that the burden of repaying the ParentPlus loan would fall on her Girlfriend because she was the one who benefited from it. I have tried to explain to her that it is not the case, but she would never refuse her mother, especially given that Mother cannot afford to pay back the loans not that Girlfriend can either. The whole thing has, once or twice, led to relationship issues which are outside the purview of this post, but in short, my family is, while not Scrooge McDuck rich, relatively well off, so I dont have the same financial stresses. Well, that loan went into repayment immediately, and my girlfriend had yet to find a job, so her mom agreed to pay off the loan for a little bit. A couple months later, moms SO finds out what has been happening and flips out. Says that Girlfriend was the one who wanted to go to college, so its her responsibility to pay for it, and threatens to kick Mother out of the house if the payments continue. Fast forward to a couple months ago, Girlfriend and I are teaching English in Asia. Before we left, I helped her put her loans in forbearance, but her moms request for forbearance was rejected. Now, Girlfriend is being stuck with something like 700 a month out of an approximately 800 paycheck, but heres the rub: the bank needed to process some paperwork in order to enable her to send money overseas, and it had been 3 months that they had not done this. Her mom starts going nuts about this because if Girlfriend doesnt start paying, they will lose the two babies they are trying to adopt. Anyway, Girlfriend cant make the bank get their act together, but they finally do, and she has been sending close to 600 every month the most the bank will allow her to send, and with the fees and the cost of a cab to the bank, it leaves her like 140 a month for food, transportation, supplies, and entertainment.TL;DR: Girlfriend is being made to send 75 of her paycheck to pay off ParentPlus loans that her mother took out.  <response>: As youve mentioned, Parent PLUS loans are not the legal responsibility of your girlfriend. Parent PLUS loans cannot be taken out by the student, so they are legally only the obligation of the parent who signed up for them.However, the Parent PLUS loans may be a moral obligation of your girlfriends. My girlfriends mother told her that the burden of repaying the ParentPlus loan would fall on her Girlfriend because she was the one who benefited from it. If the understanding when the loans were taken out was that your girlfriend would be repaying the debt, then she should repay the debt. It sounds like the loans were truly obtained by her mother for her to finish school, and not that the funds were used for her mothers own purposes. Parent PLUS loans were designed for that purpose, in that they allow students to obtain funds for college that they otherwise would be hard pressed to get. Without her mother signing up for the Parent PLUS loans, your girlfriend would probably not have been able to attend the school she did. If she allowed her mother to take the loans out with the understanding that she would be the one paying them back, she should do so. 