How much aid can I get realistically?

Madison85
Sat, 11 Oct 2014 15:07:53 +0000

@damara: Congrats to you for confronting your dad about the Social Security payments. I calculated that with three children (the total for the three kids is 50% of the parent’s total) - a check has been coming to you for around $400 a month for as many years as your dad has been collecting social security. [$30,000/year x 50% = $15,000, and then divided by 12 months = $1250 and then divided by three children = $417/month].

While people on CC have said differently (and I am not a SS expert) and have a different perspective, my understanding is that your parents did NOT have to spend this on your needs (food, clothes, insurance, housing) and could have saved 100% of it for your college expenses. There is actually no requirement that this money MUST be spent.

A similar situation happened to a friend of mine regarding her daughter with the divorced dad receiving the child’s SS checks and using them for ‘his’ contribution to her verbally agreed-upon child support (which is perfectly legal) - but he claimed that he HAD to spend the money and it could NOT be saved for college.

At my suggestion, my friend marched over to the SS office with her daughter and had an appointment about the situation. Since the child lived almost 100% of the time with the mother, the mother was able to get the representative payee changed to herself and get the monthly checks out of the divorced father’s control (he had subsequently remarried, and had a boat, horse, RV to pay for). Now the child’s monthly checks (over $1000, since she is an only child) are going into college savings - a 529 account.

Like I said, while your dad can use your and your siblings social security checks to pay to take care of you, he appears to have plenty of money and does not ‘need’ YOUR SS money. (I look at it like your SS money is helping him increase his half million in investments since he doesn’t have to spend as much of his own money to take care of you). I personally feel parents who get this windfall by virtue of being old enough for SS but with kids under 18 should save that money for the child in a 529 account.

When did you dad turn 65? Perhaps you should calculate how much you received in SS since he began collecting SS, and, well, I think you should just discuss this with him; that (ethically, in my opinion) this should be your money and he should set this chunk aside for you (and for your siblings) in 529 accounts.

In my friend’s situation - it seemed clear that by the transitive property, he was using the daughter’s SS money to support his retirement lifestyle of new wife, new boat, new horse, vacations. Since he wouldn’t have been able to afford those things if he had to pay for his 50/50 share of his child’s expenses from his own money.

[I find the SS situation similar to when a child pays for his own tuition through loans and scholarships with little to no help from the parents, and then the parents take the $2500 American Opportunity Tax Credit and do not turn around and give the child the $2500 tax savings].