To be fair, I think her cash flow problems are more related to the fact that she quit her job. She was married and receiving parental support in the previous years and still had Pell eligibility so it’s not really the marriage that’s complicating issues, just the fact that she had a job and higher household income in the year in question but not the actual year that she’s going to school.
That being said, there’s not much a college can do about this in terms of Pell eligiblity. As other posters indicated a parent choosing not to support a child’s education or one spouse choosing not to support the other is a family decision; if they adjusted aid for that they would have to give a full ride to anyone who said, “oh, even though we are married and live together we don’t share finances at all,” If the job loss was a result of a layoff or something like that then you could check the box as a ‘dislocated worker’ but that doesn’t apply to someone who quits a job to spend more time on school.