My ex husband is filling out the FAFSA for my daughter. We have 3 dependant children. He already submitted his 2014 taxes claiming only the daughter that will be going to college as a dependant. the 3 children split equal amounts of time between our households.
On the FAFSA changing his section from a household of 2 to a household of 3 is the difference between my daughter qualifying for the Pell grant or not (and potentially a lot of other college specific grants)
My question is. Can he show 2 dependants on the FAFSA but only 1 dependant on his taxes? Will this raise red flags? If he tries to amend his taxes to change the dependants before the original has been processed will this cause issues?
One school daughter has already accepted too indicates if student qualifies for Pell they are also eligible for other grants that offer 100% tuition. In some cases this school may request a CSS to be filled out…which would disqualify her because of my income.
The Pell is decided based on the FAFSA only. The Profile has nothing to do with Pell Grant eligibility at all.
But a question. You say your former husband is doing the FAFSA, and you might be Pell eligible with him doing so? Does he provide more support to the college attending daughter than you do? With “equal time spent” it’s the parent who provides more support that is supposed to be used on the FAFSA. Usually this is the parent with the higher income.
Support is split equally between us. Our incomes are very similar. Our divorce agreement has us alternating with years we claim as dependants. It just happens this year he claims 1 child and I claim 2. But this difference means qualifying for the Pell grant or not.
If the other two kiddos also live with your former husband half the time, I would think he could use them on the FAFSA…assuming he provides the majority of their support as well.
But because this is not going to align with his tax return (which he will need to link to the IRS Data Retrieval tool), and will result in Pell eligibility, it is highly likely that this will be selected for verification. He will need to be able to document that he actually provides more support…not an equal half, but MORE for this kiddo, and likely the siblings. Otherwise, for financial aid purposes, they really are not members of his household, they are members of yours.
Hoping someone else has an opinion about this…because this post is based on my understanding…and could be wrong.
It doesn’t matter which parent takes the tax deduction because the IRS allows divorced parents to swap them back and forth. Often one takes them in odd years, the other in even. The IRS rule is not the same as the FAFSA rule.
For FAFSA, just be honest. If time is truly equal, ex can claim them if he supplies slightly more support. In fact, he can claim all three because that’s what the rules say. Next year, he could do the same if he’s filing out FAFSA.
Thank you for your responses. How does one prove they supply slightly more support? Just want to keep everything up front and not later find out money will be taken away.
If you are both in agreement that he (or you) provide more food/clothing/camps/school fees/medical care, that should be enough to satisfy the school. They don’t want both parents claiming they supply more. For FAFSA, you could also just have the children stay one more overnight per year with the claiming parent, and then there is not an issue of supplying slightly more, the test becomes time. You may think it is silly to keep a calendar, but that’s the easiest way.
There have been 365 days in the last year prior to filing fafsa. Being an odd number it’s not really possible your daughter spent 1/2 the nights at each household unless one night she got up in the middle of the night and switched households.
Not trying to be smart about it, but who she spent more time with seems to be being taken a little lightly.
As for the support, there’s all kinds of things that go into that. Food, shelter, clothing, education expenses. The big one may be who provided medical and/or dental insurance and the cost of that.
Here’s a form you could use. It’s essentially the support test form for a qualifying child but the principle is the same. You have to adapt it to a comparison of which parent provided the most support.
But annoyingdad, the parents can agree that the two weeks she spent at camp are attributable to the dad, or the many Saturday nights she slept at a girlfriend’s house are really Mom’s. The 365 only works with one getting one extra night if all 365 are spent with a parent.
My nephews are assigned by the court 50/50, but there are plenty of swaps. This weekend they are coming to a hockey tourney with their mother (Friday night) and then switching to their father for Sat/Sun. I don’t know whose week it really is, but on Monday they’ll go back to the regular pattern. That means Mom picked up one night or Dad picked up two nights (they switch on Mondays). The next time it might favor the other parent.
FAFSA doesn’t have a counting squad. If the parents agree, that should be enough proof. It is when they don’t agree that it’s a problem, or if the number of nights is really not close to 50/50 and they claim it is.
Similar incomes, but because he is self employed, on paper he appears to make less then me. His income is right at the top end of Pell eligibility and mine is enough higher then his that claiming myself as the costodial parent would be over the cut off.
We have never tracked which house which kid is as more, things change depending on what they are doing with friends. I pay for the health insurance premium, he cover half of co-pays, buys them most of their clothes. It really is a even split.
Well…if he is at the top of Pell eligibility, how much Pell do you think you will receive? If his EFC per FAFSA is about $5200, you get nothing from Pell at all. And if it’s a $4500 FAFSA efc, the Pell would be about $1200.
Is this amount going to make or break her college attendance? It might. But if you are that close to the edge, are these schools really affordable at all?
Also, keep in mind that the custodial parent on the profile needs to match the custodial parent on the FAFSA.
So…if your self employed husband is the custodial parent on the FAFSA, he will be on the Profile as well…and you will complete the non-custodial parent Profile, if required. Your self employed husband likely has deductions allowed by the IRS which are not allowed by the colleges for financial aid purposes…and will be added back as income. This won’t affect any Pell eligibility you have, but it could affect aid at these Profile schools.
What is the projected EFC with the added two kids as members of the household? What is it without them?
But she said that one benefit of being Pell eligible is that other scholarships kick in from the school. That’s a big bonus. OP, the ‘more support’ is only an issue if the time is dead even. Go back and see if you can reasonably claim the kids were at his house more last year (or one year from the date of filing FAFSA; today?). If so, time is the tie breaker, not support. As I said, my nephews are 50/50, but they could look at a calendar and say "Oh, the boys spent an extra week with dad camping in July’ and thus time would win over support.
Agree with twoin…the main acid test is time. If the child resided with the parent one day more in the year prior to the date of FAFSA filing, that parent is the custodial parent. Could your kids all stay with their dad all week this week…and then file next week?
The only time income and support come into play is if this is really an equal split in terms or residency as of the year just prior to the date of FAFSA filing.
No, who is declared as a dependent on taxes does NOT have to match who is so claimed on the tax returns. With divorced families, it is not unusual for splits to be agreed upon for maximum tax advantages and the IRS allows this leeway. That way both parents, can say, claim HOH, by each claiming a kid as a dependent on their taxes, even if the decree and actual living arrangements and support are such that only one parent is truly custodial for both kids.
For FAFSA, its a whole other definition that goes into WHO is the custodial parent. It doesn’t matter a whit who is claiming the child for tax purposes, or what the divorce decree says. The custodial parent who is the one who files the FAFSA is the one with whom the student lived the most in the 365 days before the form is filed. If the tiem is split evenly and can’t even have one parent claim one more night the kid spent, then it goes to who provided the most support to the kid. It doesn’t matter whether you lose out on PELL or not.
So if your student spends about equal time, then make sure the that it’s at least one more day/night with Dad. There won’t be flags with discrepancies between that and the IRS form, but if Dad lives in Alaska and you live in Maryland, and your DD is going to school in MD, there would be a question as to how the heck she’s spending more time with him.
If her fafsa is selected for verification just be prepared for your husband to fill out additional forms as well as either your husband using the IRS data retrieval tool or obtaining a tax transcript. He will be physically signing some forms about time spent at his household and number in household in addition to the electronic signature provided with fafsa.
Actually if the father signs over to you dependent tax deduction(s) his taxes will go up and his EFC will go down. Your taxes will go down and you can reimburse him.