non-custodial parent troubles

breakurjea
Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:33:58 +0000

So i’m sure everyone has heard this story before, divorced parents, live with mom who earn about 14kish a year (counting child support), dad isn’t involved in paying a cent for my college, but css still considers the non-custodial parent’s money (110k income, decent amount of assets), blah blah blah.

I realize my situation is FAR from unique. With just my mom (FASFA), my EFC was around 13kish, because she unwisely transferred some 100k+ dollars into her account that she borrowed from my aunt to buy our house (another strange choice when her income earning abilities are so low). I’m sure it would’ve been lower otherwise. Yet with CSS included, the aid sent by Northwestern had my EFC at around 49k. And the 3k wasn’t in grants, but in loans. Quite obviously, we cannot even DREAM of meetings this EFC.

HOWEVER i have heard that some universities have some sort of waiver that if you get signed by the non-custodial parent, somehow waves the non-custodial parent’s contribution. Does Northwestern have this waiver?