New federal class action anti-trust lawsuit filed, accusing some CSS Profile colleges of charging too much because they require NCP info for students with non-custodial parents (divorce or separated and living apart). Will be interesting to see what happens with this.
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I mean aid is at the discretion of the school.
I’m no lawyer but doubt this has teeth.
I agree it seems low probability.
I wonder if the Feds brought this action because of the results of the FA collusion lawsuit where the 568 President’s Group schools settled for big $?
I think it’s ridiculous. It’s the schools’ money to award according to the parameters they set. If their thought is that both parents should bear financial responsibility for their child’s education, then as long as all students in the same situation are awarded aid using the same parameters, I can’t see that there is an issue. After the other successful suit, though, I’m sure that the lawyers see a way to twist things around. The suit may prevail, which is why the lawyers are trying it.
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Looks like this is the plaintiffs’ complaint:
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Plaintiffs and lawyers in this lawsuit do not appear to be government related.
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The lawsuit looks like it will survive initial motions to dismiss due to the allegations of cartel like activity to engage in a system of price fixing.
Of course, initial impression is based on just one filing by the Plaintiffs, but it does address a situation which restricts free market competition resulting in harm to a particular class of consumers.
My best guess is that the US Justice Dept. will join the lawsuit in support of the Plaintiffs’ positions.
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Sadly, I have several divorced friends where the non-custodial parent (father) refuses to contribute to their child’s education or to provide any financial information in the CSS. In all of those cases, the father has significantly more money than the custodial parent. With two of my friends, the student was able to get a CSS waiver with the help of the school guidance counselor. In the other cases, the students could only apply to FAFSA only colleges.
So I have a lot of sympathy for kids who are being limited by their non-custodial parent’s unwillingness to help. With the friends that I know personally, the fathers are clearly trying to punish their exes by refusing to help their kids. It is really not about the father being unable to contribute; it is that the father does not want to do anything that might make their ex-wives’ burden easier. That said, if CSS colleges cannot expect both parents to contribute, I think there will be a lot more wealthy families playing custody games to increase a student’s chances at financial aid.
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Current FAFSA rules are that the parent who contributes the most to the students financial support is the custodial parent/FAFSA filer…that is often the parent who makes more money, even if that parent doesn’t have physical custody/the student spends less time with them.
Regardless, I also have a lot of sympathy for students whose parents, regardless their situation, can’t or won’t help pay for college.
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I’d forgotten about that. I think this may not have originally applied to the families that I know because their kids are older (a junior and a senior in college). I am not sure how the mothers handled it. But I know that the fathers refused to participate in the process at all when the students were seniors in high school. .
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Note that not all CSS Profile using colleges require the CSS Noncustodial Profile (see the second-to-last column of https://profile.collegeboard.org/profile/ppi/participatinginstitutions.aspx , but verify on college web sites if considering applying based on that information). However, many of the better known ones do – probably because they tend to attract students from higher SES backgrounds (where the divorced parents are more likely to have money and more able and likely to try to game the financial aid system).
Some colleges that do not use the CSS Profile also require non-custodial parent information, in at least some situations. For example, Princeton requires it if the custodial parent has not remarried.
Of course, if those fathers did not financially contribute generally, or their child support payments were low enough, then the new rules would still consider the mothers the custodial parents.
But the old FAFSA rules from 3-4 years ago considered the custodial parent the one the student lived with most of the time (with level of financial support being the tie breaker if the student live with each one the exact same number of days in the year).
There are many kids whose never divorced parents refuse to contribute anything to them for college … it’s not limited to divorced parents. And those kids are in a bad situation. I knew a number of students whose parents refused to even compete a FAFSA. Parents not contributing is nothing new, and it’s not limited to divorced guys who are trying to get even with the ex.
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Right, but I can’t imagine those students successfully suing the colleges for not giving them as much aid as is given to students whose parents do fill out the forms. So I am not understanding why the children of non-custodial parents would have a better case for getting more aid just because their non-custodial parents refuse. In both cases (single and 2 parent households), it seems to be an issue of whether the colleges can demand financial information from parents in order to award aid. And if the college can’t demand that information from parents then wouldn’t nearly all students need close to full aid? I don’t know any 18yos with large incomes or tens of thousands of dollars in their own accounts.
While true, it is likely that divorced parents on average confer financial and other disadvantages to their kids with respect to college, even if they agree to cooperate with respect to college funding and financial aid:
- They may have spent some of their money litigating their divorce, possibly funding their lawyers’ kids’ college instead of their own kids’ college.
- After divorce, they tend to live separately, which tend to consume more of their combined income and assets than living together in a shared home.
- Shared custody arrangements may be disruptive to the kids’ school and extracurricular activities.
The purpose of financial aid is to assist those most in need with the costs of education. Ability to pay is determined by evaluating the relative financial strength of the student’s family.
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