Major Financial Aid Difficulty

cptofthehouse
Wed, 30 Oct 2013 08:45:41 +0000

Here is the bottom line: without a completed FAFSA, you cannot get anything other than the Stafford Direct loans. Your stepfather may out and out refuse to fill out form or give out any financial information. You can explain that it doesn not mean he is obligated to give penny one, but it is a common problem that some parents refus to fill out FAFSA or give out any of their financials. IT’s a major stumbling block for a lot of students. So this is not an uncommon problem.

The other thing is that if he and your mother do fill out the FAFSA, their combined income and assets may be too much for you to get anything other than the Stafford loans. What have you been getting each year with just your mother’s info? The EFC will likely go up and you may no longer be entitled to any more aid. You may lose the interest subsidy of the Stafford. But you know you can complete the FAFSA yourself if your parent refuses to do so and still get the unsubsidized Stafford. That’ s all you would get, but that may be all you would get even if your parents filled out the loan.

You can ask you father if he would fill out a tax return, and if you spend more time with him, than with your mother in the year before filling out the form, you can use him as a custodial parent. The FAFSA for the 2014-15 school year only wants information for year 2013. So he would have to file the IRS form for just this year that is coming to an end. Now that could trigger questions from the IRS as to what he was doing in past years, which could be an issue for him. But if his income is so very low, or what he claims as income is so very low, maybe he did not owe taxes. But if you can get him to one of those tax completion things, and help him get started with getting his tax situation straightened out, it would be a good thing.

You can ask your mother to be removed from her taxes as a dependent and be placed on your dad’s taxes as such which may give him Head of Household status which could reduce any taxes or even give him a tax credit for this year, that is, if you father is not married as well. It would be nice to get your father out of the non tax filing quandrey he is now in.

With many parents, they won’t budge about filling out the FAFSA, and they do have a point if they absolutely do not want to release the info to others. IT’s their right, their privacy, their business. Can’t do anything about that. And as said above, it may not mean getting anymore money anyways if the combined income and assets put you over certain need threshholds.