<p>Summary(sort of) of the context. Please bear with me. After rereading through this I realized it might sound a bit far-fetched but I promise(as much as that is worth from some random student off the internet)thats it the truth as far as human perception and memory can be trusted:</p>
<p>Short Version:
-High school senior soon to be college undergrad(cross fingers)(oldest out of five)
-Biological father(aka "The Sperm Donor") is a psycho and con-artist who does not pay child support.
-Mother is too sick to work.
-Mysterious stepfather who may or may not have the capabilities to help with college but doesn't seem willing to help.
-Stepfather reportedly doesn't make enough money to help with anything beyond the basics needs.
-confused like crazy about Financial aid, specifically in regards to FAFSA and their contradicting message.</p>
<p>Details:</p>
<p>I'm a high school senior who is already enrolled(pending end of the year high school transcripts) in a 4 year university.
I have 4 younger siblings. I'm the eldest.</p>
<p>Between 7th and 8th grade, so about 5 years ago, my biological parents got divorced and we moved away my father and lived with my Mother at her parent's house. My father was diagnosed with several things the details of which I can't completely recollect. Essentially he was bipolar and schizophrenic . It is of my understanding that at least every 6 months he is reinstated in a mental hospital which keeps him from being responsible for any sort of child support. Very unlikely I'll be getting any help from here.</p>
<p>My Mother has a ton of medical problems. She has a heart that pumps irregularly due to a surgery done a few years back which from what I understand screwed up the nerves around her heart that causes it act in such an erratic manner. Thats just one complication though. A few years back shortly after the divorce my mom was having severe problem with the disks in her spine, a few were losing fluids or something and her being overweight didn't help. She was having difficulties with regular weight loss(due to her heart problems I think) but managed to get this surgery that removed part of her stomach. Good news is that she lost astounding amounts of weight, which reduced the stress on spine greatly and she was doing really good for a short time.</p>
<p>What happened afterwords, in my opinion, wasn't worth the gain. Apparently scar tissue shrunk the entrance to my mom's stomach. The people who did the surgery moved offices or something a few weeks afterwords and we still haven't been able to get in contact with them. I forgot to mention this perform but my Mom at one point in time had cancerous tissue, though it was successfully removed from her body. In addition to the scar tissue(which is or is in addition to the Hineal hernia which I'm not sure what that is but thats what she tells me that she has)the cists and uclers reappeared. Mostly in her stomach at first, so what little nutrition did make it to her stomach, was forced back up from agitation. Then they started appearing elsewhere. She now has tumors in her limbs and one in her brain. As one could imagine this is causing a lot of problems.</p>
<p>My father had canceled our health insurance (pre-existing conditions prevents us from getting new health insurance). Oh and as one can imagine my mom can't get a job due to an FBI investigation on my father for real estate and tax fraud. Even if my mom got a job, she isn't healthy enough to work one.</p>
<p>At the same time this is going on, my Mother had met this guy off a dating site(Great idea...not). Who at first seemed like a nice genuine guy who seemed to really care for us. He's the reason we had Christmas, he's the reason my family had a car and generally helped us when we needed it. Well after two years of internet dating they decided that we would spend a summer with him in Texas where he lives. Two weeks after moving away from NC(and all the benefits of having the most awesome grandparents in the world and food and health finance benefits that NC gave us), they got married like two very responsible adults. (This occurred the summer between 10th and 11th grade so almost two years ago.) So it turned from a vacation to meet a really nice guy to living with him. Which that was going pretty well at first. The guy is very secretive about everything especially anything dealing with money but I do know that he is the CEO of a very very small oil drilling company. This guy is also about twenty years older than my mom, and he's really set in his ways.</p>
<p>After we moved in with him, his behavior changed(at least from what I was told of how he was from my Mom before we actually met him) and stopped acting nice and kind of closed himself off to us. Sometimes he says he will help me with college(at least according to my mom, he doesn't ever tell me directly) and other times he doesn't. I've tried talking to him but he doesn't really pay any attention. I've been looking and I'm still looking for a job, I have a stack of applications right in front of me right now that I've been working on. I don't think thats going to be enough to pay for college though if I manage to get a job. Currently my tuition is going to be 8k and according to my college counselor overall for just like EVERYTHING will approximately be around 20k for freshman year. I've been looking at workstudy programs but I'm still working on looking further into that.</p>
<p>==================================</p>
<p>Now the immediate problem is with FAFSA. I'm really confused about the whole marital thing considering that: My last name hasn't changed and my Stepfather hasn't adopted me. I'm also now 18. According to my Stepfather, his business stuff will screw me automatically for financial help (and then says he can't or won't help me himself). I have no clue how I'm going to pay for college. I'm not a minority and don't have enough volunteering experience to amount to anything. I have a 3.4 GPA which in comparsion with my Texan Peers is below the 50% mark considering that everyone here takes freshman classes in 8th grade and then take pre-ap and AP classes (which were not available to me back in NC excluding AP European History) So in comparsion, low class rank, low GPA I have like a 1280 combined math and reading SAT score. Lack of Job and volunteer experience. I'm not having much luck with merit based stuff. So I'm trying to see if I'll qualify for need. Both me and my mom have called FAFSA to get more detailed information on how my stepfather affects this stuff. They told me to include him, they told her to exclude him. Tonight, I talked with one of them via their live online help service and they told me to include him. Considering also his unwillingness to help in this regard(which I'm trying to figure out how I can be a better stepson in his eyes so that he will help me). I'm confused on whether to inclue or exclude him.</p>
<p>As of right now, I'm really lost on how to handle all of this regarding financing college and my parents haven't been much help and to be honest I don't want to end up like them, I want to go to college and make something out of myself, I've already gotten into college now I just got to figure out the rest. So anyone willing to offer any advice about the FAFSA or anything else that would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>So there it all is pretty much, sorry for it being lengthy but I want anyone willing to try to help me to really understand the situation.</p>