thumper1, I’m a little confused by your statement. Can you clarify? CalGrant doesn’t make room for describing our children’s situations. And residency isn’t in question.
You want to know which of your kids counts as a dependent resident of your home For Calgrant . In my opinion, your query that you sent to the Calgrant folks should describe your kid situations and ask if the are considered your resident dependents for Calgrant purposes.
CSAC and Cal Grant use info from FAFSA. You use the FAFSA question 73 --Cal grant uses the FAFSA information to determine eligibility. All income and family size al comes from FAFSA for CAL GRANT, I gave you that FAFSA info in my post #6 and you found it later (but I dumbly also incorrectly stated FAFSA uses IRS)
BrownParent, the Cal Grant senior rep also stated that they use the IRS’s definition for dependents. Though this same senior rep questions specialist also gave me bad info in another somewhat related area of the FAFSA which I’d already had studied up on which I ended up correcting her on, so I began to doubt her knowledge just a bit. I’m hoping to receive in writing from them something which will confirm how I’m understanding this now.
It’s nice to have more eyes looking at this to confirm what I believe I’m seeing now. Thank you! : )
Ok. well, I know you need to know for sure. It is a big difference to pay tuition vs free tuition. But think what info they request in order to determine cal grant. A) FAFSA and B) gpa
I don’t think they gather any other info do. I suppose you could try to get to the original bill to see what it says:
California Education Code section 69432.7(k)
Oh, this is by no means free tuition. 
I am familiar with Cal Grant, as our two kids who’ve gone the college route have been Cal Grant recipients for 7 years now. I’m thinking ahead towards next year’s FAFSA in January for her senior year in fall of 2016. Yes, there is a minimum GPA requirement as well.