Any legal obligation to parent in FAFSA lies?

Paying for College
1

I am wondering if I should take any action here…morally or legally.

One of my children got kicked out of college due to mental health issues. She got told she had to get help in order to be allowed to return. There has never been an intention to send her back to that college. But she did not want to be on medication or go to a therapist or anything else. Her behavior has been really off the wall, not even able to hold a job.

She is adopted. She ran to her birth parents and they said they would “protect” her from us. Catch is, they have serious problems themselves. The entire situation is very sad. Birth parents never ever had any rights. I have heard a variety of terrible stories about things that have gone on since she has been there. And about the birth parents, they gave her away and never looked back. These were not nice people. I have known birth parents who were wonderful loving people who gave their child away out of love. That is not the story here. These were people who had a different child taken away for child abuse and with her, they said they hated her before she was born and didn’t care what happened to her. Fine. whatever. We gave her a great life and provided her with everything. We loved her anyway.

Moving forward though, I have been told she is apply to colleges where she will get financial aid by claiming independent on her FAFSA, or claiming her birth parents. Both are illegal.

I am torn because I feel like if I step in to intervene, then I am just being meddling. I Googled it and it seems that someone could actually come back on me and my husband and claim we lied, or we instructed her to do this. She actually would likely claim that if she thought she were to get in trouble and wanted to get out of trouble.

Fact is, we will not pay now. We poured thousands of dollars in to her college that she was kicked out of. She is refusing any sort of treatment. So even if we stepped in to make sure her FAFSA is correct, we would not be willing to pay the EFC at this point, under these circumstances. Knowing that, should we stay out of it? Can we get in trouble if we do stay out of it?

2

Her birth parents will need to get a PIN to sign that FAFSA if she uses them as her parents.

I have no idea how she could declare herself indeoendent for FAFSA purposes. You can’t just decide you are indeoendent. No question, the college would question her independent status.

Your PIN and signature won’t be used on this FAFSA.

Yes, it’s fraudulent, but I’m not sure exactly what you would do about this.

3

Don’t sign anything and you won’t commit any crime. She’ll have to use her SSN for any school records, and I think her plan will unravel pretty quickly.

BTW, people don’t ‘give away’ their children, they place them for adoption or have their parental rights terminated.

4

I think morally all you can do is talk her out of it and not get involved in actually signing the forms or providing your PIN (hopefully she doesn’t know your PIN). It’s a mistake to fraudulently provide information on the FAFSA; if you are her legal parent she can’t just select two other people to be her parents instead (if you could do that, every rich family would game the financial aid forms), and if she is independent then she wouldn’t need your information anyway.

5

If she does know your PIN, go change it now. I assume you can do that.

6

I would think there would be red flags if her SSN was tied to you on a previous FAFSA and then it became linked to someone who is illegal and has no SSN.

7

Who said the birth parents were illegal and had no SSN?

It is very possible they have SSNs. That isn’t the issue. The issue is…they are not legally this child’s parents as she was adopted by another family.

If this student applied for federal aid before with her adoptive parents…one would wonder if there is a cross reference that would catch that she was filing anew with different parents.

8

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Moving forward though, I have been told she is apply to colleges where she will get financial aid by claiming independent on her FAFSA, or claiming her birth parents. Both are illegal.


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I misread this…I thought the OP was saying that the birth parents are illegal…i realize now she means that the claims are illegal.

9

You are still her parents.
I’m sure this is very difficult.
Have you contacted a counselor or a mediator to help your family through this situation?
How old is she?

10

I’m assuming this is the daughter that was a very unstable high school senior, last January?
Did she end up attending the large university that you were so concerned about?

11

No, smaller school. And then got kicked out, asked to leave, invited to leave, not allowed to stay. However you word it. Once home, she went off the deep end even worse. She has done shocking things. I look back and I do realize we spoiled her. But spoiled does not cause this. She had problems for a long time. She went off her medication. I still love her and it hurts.

12

Yes, there are any number of frauds that your daughter and/or her birth parents can perpetuate, and not just on FAFSA. It really is not your business to sit there and try to manage all of this, as much as you are emotionally involved, beyond protecting yourself. These are all adults here. I suggest you consult an attorney and have a letter crafted to give her due notice that you are protecting yourself from any identity theft, with an attorney’s signature, notary certified and sent certified mail. This is to make sure you are protecting yourself from any use of your signature, name, financial info, SSN, PIN, etc, as a matter of record, and also to give her warning on involving you with any fraud. I would then subscribe to Lifelock or other such service to make sure your SSN and other info is not being used to secure any loans, credit,anything without your permission. That is where the risk lies for you.

As for the thousands of other ways your daughter can commit fraud, there just isn’t anything you can do about it. What are you going to do? Declaring herself independent? Students try that each year, and the schools are vigilant about verifying that declaration when under 24. As for using her birth parents as her parents, that’s between them and her, and up to the schools to verify that info, and again, does not involve you. As long as she is not using your info, your signature, your credit, your ID to get funds, it’s not your problem. Attempting to be preemptive in all the possible fraud scenarios is an exhaustive endeavor. She could be planning to rob a convenience store, for all you know By making sure she is aware that you are taking measured to protect your identity and info, monitoring your credit inquiries, you will be making the move to protect yourself from any nefarious plans. This would clear up any involvement you could be dragged into with personal information, which is where the risk lies.

13

A ‘certified, notarized, sent certified mail’ letter does nothing. It is NOT ‘of record’ because it is in fact not recorded anywhere. A notary merely attests that the signature is the person who signed it. That’s it. It doesn’t prove anything else at all, just that the person signed it and if it is contested, the signature will stand up in court. In this case, the parents would not be unavailable to testify that a signature on a loan document (or FAFSA or college app) was his/hers. In fact, the parents would be swearing that the signature WASN’T his/hers.

The only value of such a letter would be if it were sent to the college as notice that the FAFSA is false.

14

Does your D have keys to your cars and house? I’d be more worried about physical safety (hers mostly but yours also) than anything else right now. Is there a social worker who has been involved with the family who has a good relationship with your D who can help intervene to get her treatment?

15

To the OP. I’m not sure how you would intervene with regards to the FAFSA. Do you even know which colleges this student will apply to?

At this point, I think you should do,as suggested above. Secure your financials and security.

And maybe find someone who can provide you support as you work through this very difficult time.

16

So far, she called the police and tried to claim we committed identity theft against her. It did not work. Her birth parents initially came after us and told us we have to give them money for her. Then, she tried to get a young man to “witness” to CPS that we beat her and our children. She offered him sex in exchange. She was a virgin when she left here. I am shocked over that, and well, everything. The young man refused. We never did that and he never saw that. I signed on to last year’s FAFSA and removed our social security numbers. I am hoping she would not know them otherwise. I had opened her a college bank account that is attached to mine and has her name on it, but I am going to close it Tuesday. She should not be able to access my regular account from that account, but I would hate for her to find a way to talk past a teller or whatever else. Oh, and also, a few weeks ago, she put in a mail forward for all our mail to go to her birth parents house. Fortunately, I got notice and was able to go in and cancel it. I had my husband go online and ask for digital documents for our tax documents from his employer, and am watching our mailbox closely. I just really wonder how far she will take this. And will she simply come out of this? Or what? It is beyond puzzling and unbelievable. To be honest, when I posted about this last year, her behavior, not these things specifically, people here told me she was way off based and it was more serious than I was taking it. They were right. I was wrong. Also, she is not my only child in college. Would she be able to get access to their information to get our social security numbers or such? I forgot…one other thing…she claims she can sue us for child support and she is going to sue us to pay for her college, none of which she has a legal right to. She is over 18. And we did pay for her initial college and she got kicked out. She claims because she has to declare our income until 24 yrs old for financial aid, it means we have a legal obligation to financially support her. Right now, as far as we can tell, the only thing she has gotten away with is sending emails to people, including friending people she saw on my FB page (which I have since set to private) so she could “inform” them about me. However, most people realize she has issues so she has not gotten far, as far as we know. Enough people know about her issues that they simply have contacted us and let us know it was going on, including her old high school. And according to her old high school, she has 2 applications in and as far as I can tell, most deadlines are past. I know there are other schools she could apply to late, but, she is a big snob over the school things. She has applied to top ten schools that are hard to get in to, and I do not think her school feels up to doing positive recommendations. I am thinking they would send bare bones ones. These are schools she applied to last year and got denied at.

Can you even password protect the FAFSA? Every time I have done the FAFSA, it just has me put in social security number and birthdate and full name. It tells me to set a password, but it does that every time and has never had me sign in using a password. When I checked, she had not started one. I do not know if she has her social security number even.

On the house, all security codes have been changed, except the one I do not know how to change. We do not have keys. But the local police are aware that she does not belong here so if she sets off an alarm, it won’t work for her to claim she lives here. And the security company is aware too.

17

Your other child could give this kiddo your SS numbers. They are on that kid’s FAFSA.

I hate to say this…but I think you need to talk to a lawyer who is can advise you about this situation. It would need to be someone familiar with the issues you are describing…adoptive parents vs birth parents. You need to protect yourselves, but you may also need to protect this young lady in some way.

18

It’s very unfortunate that she is so unstable, but as you’ve probably read on other threads on CC, this is not unusual for this age of kid to not be able to make the transition to competent adult without much more support than you anticipated. You need to not only have legal advice, but therapeutic advice to give her consistent and supportive care so she can get her life back on track.
If she did not have birth parents to seek out, but was instead seeking respite from a cult or abusive boyfriend, would you have a different approach?

19

It doesn’t DO anything but sent through an attorney’s office and on record, it shows that the person has given due warning , and it is a very emphatic warning in case there are plans to commit fraud of the sort. You are correct that the person could go right on ahead and proceed with the fraud, but it is strong evidence that the OP was NOT the one involved or implicit in any of these things. Just some evidence before the fact if indeed such fraud is perpetuated, and some warning that hopefully makes the daughter if she is thinking of doing such a think, to pause and reconsider.

20

OP- hug to you. What a dreadful situation all around.

All due respect- but FAFSA fraud is the least of your worries right now. You’ve got a kid spinning out of control and probably being manipulated emotionally by the birth parents (and anyone else in her orbit right now).

Is there anyone (pediatrician, guidance counselor, social worker, pastor, dentist) who has been a consistent, adult, discreet presence in her life up until now who can provide an intervention of sorts?