Generally, you cannot refinance loans that are not in your name. Federal student loan consolidation does not allow you to combine your spouse's loans with yours. However, some private lenders do allow refinancing a spouse's loans into your own name — meaning you take on full legal liability for the debt. This is a significant step with major financial and legal implications, and refinancing federal loans into private loses federal protections including income-driven repayment and PSLF eligibility.
The short answer: you cannot directly refinance loans that are not legally in your name. But the full picture has nuance — some private lenders allow refinancing a spouse's loans into your name, and there used to be a federal spousal consolidation option that has since been discontinued.
The U.S. Department of Education's Direct Consolidation Loan program consolidates only your own federal loans — it does not allow you to add a spouse's loans to your consolidation, and it does not allow joint consolidation of both spouses' loans. According to studentaid.gov, the program requires that all loans being consolidated belong to the same borrower. There is no current federal mechanism for one spouse to take over or consolidate the other's federal student loan debt.
The federal spousal joint consolidation program was offered briefly in the 1990s and early 2000s under the FFEL program. It is no longer available. Borrowers stuck in those old joint consolidations have historically had difficulty separating them. This is a resolved historical issue for most borrowers — the program does not exist for new borrowers today.
Private student loan refinancing operates under each lender's own underwriting criteria, not federal rules. Some private lenders offer a spousal refinancing option that allows one spouse to refinance the other's loans into their own name. In this arrangement, the refinancing spouse becomes the sole legal borrower — they take on full responsibility for the debt, the other spouse is released, and the loan is reported on the refinancing spouse's credit file.
This is not a common product feature, and not all lenders offer it. If you want to do this, you need to specifically ask lenders whether they support spousal loan refinancing (sometimes called a "spousal consolidation" or "spousal refinance" in private lending). The CFPB's guidance on student loan refinancing notes that refinancing replaces an existing loan with a new private loan, at the terms and rate the lender offers based on the refinancing borrower's creditworthiness.
If your spouse's loans are federal, refinancing them into your own name through a private lender permanently converts them to private debt. This eliminates every federal loan protection: income-driven repayment plans (SAVE, IBR, PAYE, ICR), Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) eligibility, federal forbearance and deferment options, and the federal forgiveness timeline on any IDR plan. Once converted, this cannot be undone. The CFPB and studentaid.gov both caution that refinancing federal loans into private is a one-way door.
For borrowers on an IDR plan, PSLF track, or who have any realistic shot at federal loan forgiveness, the math often favors keeping federal loans federal — even at a higher rate. The value of federal protections can far exceed the interest savings from a lower private rate.
The scenarios where refinancing a spouse's loans into your own name might be reasonable are narrow: the loans are already private (no federal protections to lose), your credit profile qualifies for a meaningfully lower rate, the repayment term works within your joint cash flow, and you both understand and accept the liability shift. Even then, consider whether the liability transfer is truly necessary — some lenders will let a creditworthy co-signer be added to a spouse's refinanced loan without the primary borrower changing, which achieves a rate benefit without the full liability assumption.