They are conditional with having employment in the first place as well as if the government entity they are under has approval for such forgiveness. My wife doesn't qualify under most programs and given the glut of newer grads or veterans (she's been beaten out by veterans for 10 positions with 100+ applications referred - none of which were non-veterans according to the hiring committee we managed to find out) she's competing against that can accept the $12 / hr wages I basically have to pay the residual myself instead. That's marriage for you.
Heh .. my wife also had a mountain of student loan debt. We saved like hell and deferred major purchases (specifically, no house). We're about to payoff the last of her loans and really happy about it. The challenging things are: (a) we were talking about getting a new car. Even though a car loan is nothing like a student loan (interest rate is much lower) and we do need to change our car, we're super queasy about getting back in the red , and (b) we're in our late 30s and property is unaffordable where we live. We're not keen to take a 600K mortgage (for a starter home) so will wait it out. We're both well-paid professionals but even then one person's loan made a big dent in our financial security. Also, the fact that we didn't own property before the real-estate boom/bubble, means we'll likely be financially stunted for life. Cest La Vie.
I bought a place in 2007 after the start-up I was at exited. That was a very expensive lesson that you didn't have to learn at least. I can't think of an actually positive outcome to this lesson fundamentally that I couldn't have just learned with some Youtube videos. The emotional scarring is what's worse than the financial scars. We can always make some more money when we've got some time in life left, but life experiences are something nobody takes away from you no matter how much you want them to go away.
I'm not sure if this is state specific or not though.