Elder Care Expenses

Paying for College
1

<p>Does anyone have any experience with including elder care expenses with their applications? My mother is my dependent and her elder care expenses cost over 20K a year which is more than my own mortgage. I have contacted two of the schools my D plans on applying to but have not received a response yet. I’m curious how much of an impact this has on the efc or parental income, specifically how they use it in calculations. Also any information on how they submitted the forms for special situations (either before or after the initial application submission) would be appreciated.</p>

2

<p>The 20K expenses won’t get reported anywhere on FAFSA; there’s no deduction from income for this type of expense.</p>

<p>This situation can affect the FAFSA EFC, though, in two ways.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>If you claim your mother as an exemption on your taxes, it will reflect in question #37, and result in a decrease in EFC.</p></li>
<li><p>If your mother lives with you, AND receives more than half her support from you, you will include her in Question #66 as a household member, and that will result in a decrease in EFC.</p></li>
</ol>

3

<p>I will be using css profile schools. She is already listed on my taxes as a dependent and I’ve been told to list her as household member also on the financial aid forms. The amount is a third of my income so I was hoping it would account for more towards the aid formula for private colleges.</p>

4

<p>I would think it is possible to ask for a professional adjustment for such expenses. We had very high medical expenses and had to document them extensively. We had to file FAFSA with our correct income figures then, once the documentation of the expenses was verified, the financial aid officer went in and reduced our AGI on FAFSA which reduced our EFC considerably.</p>

<p>I don’t know how profile schools handle similar situations but that was our experience with a FAFSA only school.</p>

5

<p>I was trying to look on finaid.org earlier but the site must have been down. Elder care expenses are listed as a common ‘special circumstance’ where a professional judgement may be used for FAFSA
<a href=“http://www.finaid.org/educators/pj/specialcircumstances.phtml[/url]”>http://www.finaid.org/educators/pj/specialcircumstances.phtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>(I used the term professional adjustment in my previous posting - it should have been professional judgement)</p>