Establishing Residency in Virginia

[WalknOnEggShells]

Hi Everyone,

I haven’t been on here in a long time. My youngest child is just starting her junior year of high school and we’ve started looking at colleges. We won’t get any financial aid, so we’re looking at privates that give large merit awards and state schools in and out of our state(New York). Right now I’m focusing on state schools.

My wife just found out that a job might open up inside her company that would require her to live somewhere along the east coast, mid to southern. She’d be covering all the states from Virginia down to Florida and could live in any state in that region of the country.

We’ve been planning to move south when our daughter graduates high school anyway, so this would just move things up by a year and a half or so. The job probably wouldn’t start until the Spring of next year.

We want our daughter to finish high school up here, so what we’re thinking is that my wife would take the job down there if she gets it, and my daughter and I would stay in NY until she finishes high school. Since my wife works 100% remotely, she would still spend a good amount of time in NY when she’s not visiting clients, but the job would require her to have a place in the south.

What I’m wondering is whether we’d be able to get in-state tuition at Virginia publics if my wife has a house or apartment there for 1 - 1.5 years before college starts for our daughter, even though our daughter would be living in NY finishing high school right up until the summer before college starts.

Any info or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
WalknOnEggShells

[LeastComplicated]

I’d say that since your daughter will be living with one parent and graduating from a high school in NY, there’s a good chance they might reject your residency application. If the whole family moved to VA a year before she started her freshman year in college, you would qualify for in state residency.

[CollegeNerd67]

This may help:

https://www.schev.edu/financial-aid/in-state-residency#:~:text=An%20individual%20must%20demonstrate%20legal%20residence%20in%20Virginia,12%20months%20preceding%20the%20first%20day%20of%20classes.

But it’s also up to the discretion of the college. It’s likely that they would reject the request when they see that your daughter graduated from a NY high school even though you own property in VA and you wife was meeting other requirements (having a VA driver’s license, etc.) It’s possible that you could qualify for in-state at some point in her 4 years, once you’ve fully moved to VA.

Maybe call admissions at one or two that she’s interested in and see what their policies are.

[twin23]

Virginia is notoriously tough for establishing domicile for colleges. I would definitely call the colleges you’re interested in before making major life decisions.

[CollegeNerd67]

Also worth mentioning - is your daughter open to all VA publics or just a specific one? She’ll be treated as an OOS applicant regardless of where your wife lives. Depending on what kind of student she is and her desired field of study, the top 3 VA publics can be a challenge to get OOS admission to. I would make sure she’s not stuck on the top ones only, just in case she’s not able to get in.

[momofboiler1]

This was our family situation where we had a second home in another state for nearly three years while our D finished HS in another with me, and spouse went back and forth. No go for instate tuition because we were still paying taxes and had a residence in the state where D graduated. This was for MD. They told us we all would have needed to move and sold our house to qualify for instate tuition.

That said, our original state would have guaranteed instate tuition all four years even if we had moved while D was in college. Perhaps the same is true in NY?

(And in a twist, my H unexpectedly had a job change in November of my D’s senior year to a totally different state.)

[Greatpyrmom]

This is from the FAQs on the William & Mary registrar’s webpage. The requirements for establishing Virginia domicile are linked in @CollegeNerd67’s post above.

[OctoberKate]

One of my colleagues has always lived in Texas, but got a job that required him to be in Virginia. He began renting an apartment in Virginia while his wife maintained their Texas residence and his twins continued to go to school in Texas. He started renting in May of the twins’ junior year.

One twin ended up at UT and the other at Virginia Tech and I believe that they are paying in state tuition at both schools. The twins are juniors now.

Of course, this is all random one person example and i could have misunderstood what he was telling me (I didn’t ask for details as it’s really none of my business, just since we had kids the same age we were both talking college). So I think it’s possible, but likely hard to prove. Looking at the info from the W&M website, the parent who moved to VA would’ve had a much higher salary than the parent who stayed in TX (assuming, I know how much the VA parent made and it was about $200k/yr, the TX parent is, I believe, a teacher and I assume that’s well above teacher salary). So in our example they could likely demonstrate the >50% of support.

Good luck!

[WalknOnEggShells]

Hi Everyone,

Seems to happen to me every time I post something. I get some free time and post a question, and then I get buried at work for 2 weeks.

Thank you to everyone for the responses.

@LeastComplicated, thanks for the info. I would love to move to Virginia now, but my daughter definitely wants to finish high school in NY, so I’ll definitely stay up north until she finishes.

Thanks for the link @CollegeNerd67, those requirements look pretty serious. This might be hard to pull off. I’m going to call admissions. Also, with regard to your question about which Virginia publics, she definitely likes the top 3, but she’s open to the others. And she’s open to the NY publics too.

@twin23, thanks for the warning. We’re probably going to make the move either way for my wife’s career. But if we can get residency somewhere out of it too, that would be great.

@momofboiler1, that’s pretty crazy. Did your husband’s job change happen in your daughter’s senior year of high school or college? Maryland does sound very strict about residency. I checked the website of the University system down there and it matched your experience. They don’t explicitly state it, but it sounds like it’s definitely a no go unless everyone is down there, including the student.

@Greatpyrmom, thanks for that info from William and Mary. This is tricky. Since my wife and I are not divorced, we can both answer Yes to questions 1 and 2. I’m going to call them. Thanks.

@OctoberKate, thanks for that example. It’s actually very similar to our situation. I don’t know how the 50% support would work since we’re married, but I’m going to calculate how much we’d lose by filing our taxes separately. That might be the easiest way to go if she gets this job. I’ve heard it’s usually not a good way to file, but I’ll have to check what it would cost in our specific situation.

Thanks everyone.

[thumper1]

@WalknOnEggShells

. I don’t know how the 50% support would work since we’re married, but I’m going to calculate how much we’d lose by filing our taxes separately

Filing your taxes separately will not affect your residency for instate status for your student.

The key in most places is where the student resides. Filing your taxes separately won’t have an impact on residency status.

[ucbalumnus]

@momofboiler1

That said, our original state would have guaranteed instate tuition all four years even if we had moved while D was in college. Perhaps the same is true in NY?

New York has a provision for New York high school graduates to apply for resident tuition: https://www.suny.edu/smarttrack/residency/

[WalknOnEggShells]

@thumper1, I get what you’re saying, and it makes sense, but did you read what @Greatpyrmom posted - the 3 things that William and Mary says can make a student eligible for in-state tuition. It says you only have to meet one of them, and one them is “Parent declares the student a dependent for tax purposes”.

I’m not saying my wife and I would only file our taxes separately. I’m saying we would file our taxes separately AND she’d be living in Virginia and paying taxes there, etc, and my daughter and I would be living in NY. Based on what @Greatpyrmom posted from William and Mary’s website, it sounds like we’d qualify for in-state tuition. Do you agree? If not, what in the criteria William and Mary posted do you think would make us ineligible?

[WalknOnEggShells]

@ucbalumnus, thank you for the link. Interesting. I might need a lawyer to decipher that! Most of the language about these residency requirements centers on who is the custodial parent and the situation of the custodial parent relative to the student.

But our case is different. We’re not separated and we’re not divorced. None of the language addresses a situation like ours. I’m going to have to call them to see how they would handle our situation. Thanks.

[thumper1]

The only way to know for sure is to contact William and Mary…and ask them.

[WalknOnEggShells]

Yes, agreed, I’m going to do that. Thank you for the feedback.

[ucbalumnus]

Married parents living together with the student would both be custodial parents.

[WalknOnEggShells]

@ucbalumnus, we would be married living apart - I’d be in NY with my daughter, and my wife would be living and working in Virginia. So I’m not sure how they’d handle that situation.

[CollegeNerd67]

@WalknOnEggShells

we would be married living apart - I’d be in NY with my daughter, and my wife would be living and working in Virginia. So I’m not sure how they’d handle that situation.

If that arrangement worked for getting residency approval, I think others would also use it and it would become a loophole that would be quickly closed. I would have gladly spent 4 years living and working in Blacksburg to get in-state residency. My home is an easy 2.5 hour commute over the NC border. Seeing my husband on weekends sounds like the perfect arrangement

I know two families who did something similar in SC, where one parent took a job transfer and moved to SC while the other parent stayed in NC and waited for the child to graduate and move on to public U’s in SC (we live on the NC/SC border so it would be easy to buy a home just over the border and take your kid to one of the many private schools in Charlotte each day - lots of people do). Neither family qualified for residency right away since the kids physically lived and were schooled in NC. I keep in touch with one of the families and they were able to get it for the last 2 years of college. Similarly, lots of people live just over the border in SC, work in Charlotte and take their kids to private school in Charlotte - those folks won’t qualify for NC in-state tuition.

Hearing VA’s residency policies from the horse’s mouth is your best bet. If you’re unable to qualify right away, maybe you can at least get it for junior & senior year.

[Thorsmom66]

I think they make it pretty difficult in VA. S24 is a first year at UVA and my husband has toyed with moving down there or buying a second home in VA as we are nearing retirement, but my sense is that it is very tough to qualify for in-state if you come in as an OOS student. Of course, this varies from state to state but I think many of the most desirable/highly rated state flagships make it very challenging to do this - they want the higher OOS tuition, after all!