You're forgetting something. Maya has something to show for her future that could convince a bank so that the bank can get her money back. The bank doesn't care when, because the longer it takes to repay, the more money the bank earns. Interest charges.
Banks
do care when. Because when you don’t make your regular loan payments—when you “default”—they get to repossess whatever it is you put up against your loan; usually whatever you purchased with your loan. It makes them way more money than interest charges. But if you purchased something intangible, like a college education, there’s nothing to repossess. Which is why any such loan would be made with something
else as collateral—like Patrick’s auto dealership or home. The bank goes after both co-signers, but since Maya has nothing to repossess,
Patrick would be on the hook, entirely.
Because Maya graduated from high school magna cum laude, Maya is definitely eligible to be a co-signer.
Nah; the bank wouldn’t give a shit. They don’t care that you graduated magna cum laude (a title they tend not to use in my state, because AP classes can grant you a GPA above 4.0), or that you’re really smart, or might get a really good job someday. You have to have a really good job
now. And a decent credit score. They want something tangible. Try taking out a bank loan sometime and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
Like I said, Maya has nothing. No job, no credit; if she had credit cards but her dad pays them, that’s
his credit. She’d never be able to take out such a loan herself—
unless it’s a federal student loan, under which the rules are different.
Therefore, I assume that Patrick has control over the money, but the money was used to purchase high-value vehicles for his used car dealership. He pays Maya College fees from year to year. That's actually enough time to sell the high-quality vehicles and thus pay Maya's college fees and at the same time make the bank loan cheaper through the profits from the sold vehicles.
There’d be no point in Patrick doing this. If he couldn’t take out a loan for high-value cars, he’d be even
less able to take out a loan for the same amount for his twins’ college tuition. Banks can repossess fancy cars; they can’t repo classes!
Collateral against Patrick’s loan would be his dealership, his home, or any other real estate he owns. The bank truly wouldn’t give a shit what he did with the money so long as they got paid on time. Miss a payment and they come for the collateral, tho.
Unless of course it’s a federally subsidized loan, which banks administer to provide disaster relief, support business through a pandemic, encourage home ownership among the poor, and the like. Because those loans don’t require collateral—the feds guarantee them instead of your collateral—banks won’t turn you down, but the
feds might. And you apply for these loans through the feds. Banks will promote them, but they only grant them when the feds agree to them. And the feds
do care what you do with them. If Patrick uses a federal loan for anything other than what the feds require, he faces prison time for fraud. Maya doesn’t, even as a co-signer;
she didn’t misappropriate the money.
As I’ve said earlier, if the federally subsidized loan is a student loan, Patrick’s definitely doing prison if he gets his hands on it. Which he shouldn’t cuz it goes straight to B&R.
Hence my earlier statement that he’s bluffing so he can keep Maya away from Josy, and every lawyer (and even non-lawyers like me) will call bullshit.
