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A comment on Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own. Parent comment

Re:Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own by dvdkhlng on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @05:00AM (#14030728)
Note that for example in germany (and I'd guess in other parts of the EU also), there is a law that limits what "standard contracts" can do to a consumer [1]. I.e. whenever a business has one contract that it uses for more than one natural person, then that contract is considered an AGB thereby greatly limiting what kind of clauses would be considered valid in that contract.

As far as I understand, many clauses will then be automatically invalid if they are too one-sided for the company. Also maximum durations of contracts are greatly restricted while certain standards for contract cancellation rights are enforced.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGB-Gesetz

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Re:Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own by voxic11 on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @08:32AM (#14031834)
In the United States we have a judicial concept called a "contract of adhesion". For a contract to be treated as a contract of adhesion, it must be presented on a standard form on a "take it or leave it" basis, and give one party no ability to negotiate because of their unequal bargaining position. The court will treat any terms outside of the reasonable expectations of the person who did not write the contract as invalid, and any ambiguous terms will be interpreted in their favor also.
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Re:Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own by dvdkhlng on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @09:27AM (#14032320)
Interesting, didn't know this. This seems to be similar to AGB-Law, albeit pretty weak. While the US "contract of adhesion" [1] concept protects against terms "outside of the reasonable expectations", the AGB-Law [2] also protects against terms that are "unreasonably to the disadvantage" of the consumer. Arbitration clauses are not valid, for example.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_form_contract#Contrac...

[2] https://www.buzer.de/s1.htm?g=BGB&a=305-310

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Re:Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own by voxic11 on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @09:40AM (#14032447)
Arbitration clauses here in the United States don't even required a valid contract, you can bind yourself to arbitration by simple agreement due to the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act
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