Thanks for sharing this info.
I feel it’s too vague… I wish they would expand the direction and give examples.
I am assuming parents can allocate various household expenses to the kid, based on the number of days the kid lives with them. So if the kid lives with one parent 70% of the time, does the parent allocate a portion of expenses like rent/mortgage, food, insurance, car, etc and include that as financial support?
Likewise I assume it’s financial support if one of the parents takes out a parent plus/any loan to pay for the kid’s college costs.
I think this is going to be a mess because it’s so vague.
I think about one family I worked with where the mom abandoned the family, and it took years of legal action to get her to pay court mandated child support. When she did so, she paid several hundred thousand dollars in child support at once. And hadn’t seen any of the kids for years. To think she would be the FAFSA parent is ridiculous. She just wouldn’t fill it out anyway. The fact that professional judgment exists doesn’t help in this case.
I know it’s a one off example, but as you know @kelsmom, I have at least one complicated situation every year…which means there are a lot of them out there.