SAN DIEGO, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 02/07/13 -- The San Diego bankruptcy lawyers at the Golden State Law Group have been helping both consumers and businesses work through extreme financial difficulties that have involved debt negotiations, handling tax debts and bankruptcy cases that were filed under Chapters 7, 11 and 13. The attorneys at the firm have recently read an extremely troubling article that appeared on the Web site of Time magazine that detailed the continued rise of student loan debt. In response to this article, the attorneys at the firm are offering a free initial consultation so that people's overall financial situations can be reviewed.

Specifically, the article at issue appeared on the Web site of Time magazine on February 4, 2013 and it was entitled, "Student Loan Debt Crisis: How'd We Get Here and What Happens Next?" The article detailed several statistics that relate to student loan debt overall, and in particular the article stated that the average student loan debt each borrower carries has risen by a factor of 30% to $23,829 over the past five years.

In addition to this statistic which was originally provided by TransUnion, more than half of the active student loan accounts that equal approximately 40 percent of the entire student debt amount owed in the United States was currently in deferral status. Deferral is a status whereby student loan borrowers are able to temporarily delay repaying their loans for a specified period of time despite the fact that interest continues to be added to the overall amount owed.

In addition to the facts provided by TransUnion, the article goes on to provide information that was originally released by FICO Labs. This information involved delinquencies on student loan accounts. According to FICO Labs, student loan delinquencies have risen by a factor of 22 percent over the past five years. In addition, the student loan delinquency rate has risen to 15.1 percent since November of 2012, when the delinquency rate was recorded at 11 percent.

The San Diego bankruptcy lawyers at the Golden State Law Group are deeply concerned about this growing financial problem. Therefore, the firm is offering free initial consultations to people who may be currently struggling with their finances. While student loan debt cannot generally be discharged in a bankruptcy case, the purpose of that free initial consultation is to allow an attorney to thoroughly review a person's overall financial situation in order to identify a potential course for recovery.

About the Golden State Law Group

The Golden State Law Group is a law firm in San Diego, California that's comprised of a team of San Diego bankruptcy attorneys who provide legal help to consumers and businesses. Specifically, the attorneys at the firm provide help to consumers in the legal areas of student loan debt problems, medical bill issues, consumer bankruptcy, business bankruptcy, tax debt issues and personal injury cases.