OK, my best female friend is in the situation where she has missed payments and had problems with her student loans. She just turned 41. At my advice she talked to my family's financial attorney. He told her that if she can just put off getting sued by these people for the next six months (when it would be 20 years) that her entire student loan debt will be forgiven under the new Obama law.
That seemed unlikely to me, so I asked a fellow family member who is also a lawyer and he looked at it and said "yep, just don't get sued during the 20 year period and your student loan will be forgiven."
After that, just to make sure I asked my little brother who is a third year law student if he would ask his law professors about it. He did and they said the same thing.