Having worked for debt collection in the past, usually what happens is your debt is eventually sold off to another company for pennies to the dollar, and they just hope they can browbeat you into paying some of it. Generally it's not worth going to court over unless they're a big company so even if they can get you on the phone or whatever... there isn't a ton they can do. If you ever needed your credit to go zoom back up (say when you want to buy a house for example), save up half the value of the loan and call them up and see if they'll accept a lump-sum payment to call it good. Start with offering 1/4 but be okay if they want half the value. Usually they're making out like bandits at half the value of the loan, so they'll often take the offer.

Here at least, they look at your bank statements for the last 6 months when you go to purchase a house, so as long as you do it 7+ months out... it should clear your credit and it won't show on your banking info as a weirdly large transaction.

...but also, just wait it out long enough and it'll get lost or forgiven. Folks who buy and resell debt don't always make it out of that game, so lost debt is entirely possible and that's basically the same as forgiven debt.