I can no longer buy a house and need to decide which route to take with my loans

My personal life has taken a hitter this year in 2025

Back in February, I moved from a rental home to an apartment to save money and be closer to my father who has been battling cancer since 2017.

Coincidently, NELNET transferred my loans to CRI that month. I received no forwarded mail during that time from NELNET or CRI. I received one email from CRI that was sent to unimportant and it straight up looks like spam because it doesn’t look official.

This week, I met with my CPA to get my stuff in order to get approved for a mortgage and was informed I’m 137 days delinquent on my student loans. I had been in forbearance with Nelnet. I immediately contacted CRI and set up my account this morning and they told me to kick rocks because I’m over 90 days.

They said they “emailed me”. After my initial email in February I received 3 emails in June that say “no action needed” 😂 Then nothing until I set up my account today.

I have the means to completely catch up my payment, and set up auto payments. But my issue is the credit. I have 12 loans, so each month behind racks up my “delinquent accounts”. They will not provide me a good will letter. They said I could dispute it with the credit bureaus. They also said I qualified for forbearance, that would cover even this months payments, it would cover my past due payment, and I could start repaying in October.

Should I catch up and dispute? Is there a chance to get it fixed? Or do I accept the forbearance?

Would it help to pay in full, then request past forbearance?

My father is terminal and I needed to be able to buy a home so he could do hospice with us. Unfortunately mortgage lenders don’t care about income, they care about credit scores so with the current state of things, I am SOL with my credit if I can’t remedy this.