A. The burden will be on you if you co-sign a loan and borrower defaults, and you can bet that the lenders will aggressively pursue, because ultimately the lenders can garnish your social security benefits.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, 75% of all co-signed loans in default are ultimately repaid by the co-signers, not the original borrowers. Delinquencies are also reported on the co-signers' credit reports.
For example, in an effort to recover millions in unpaid student debts, the federal government sometimes debits the Social Security benefits of recipients who co-signed loans. About $1.1 billion reportedly has been collected this way since 2001. In 2015 alone, $171 million was taken from about 114,000 recipients age 50 or older who had co-signed loans that had been in default for at least a year.