<p>While I sympathize with the original poster's situation...I think the actual parents are the ones who need to be scrutinized. When someone marries into an existing family, he/she needs to understand that the children are a part of the package. Any man who told me "I'll marry you but I won't support your children" would be kicked to the curb instantly.</p>
<p>Also, I think that parents and children need to begin discussing these types of issues WAY before their Junior or Senior year of HS. And children need to be mindful of what parental assets will or will not be available to aid with the high cost of tuition. Then they need to look at Institutions which fall within their finanical ability to afford. While some may think this crushes dreams...dreams which are outside of reality are almost never achievable, especially when you are trying to rely on someone else to help you achieve it. </p>
<p>I would have LOVED to have been able to attend Yale or Harvard...but the reality is...I cannot afford it. Therefore, I looked to Institutions which I could afford. When I graduated from HS, I knew that neither my mother or father would help me fund my education...so I planned my education accordingly.</p>
<p>I do feel bad for children whose parent's think that help ends at 18, but sometimes the children just do not understand the financial situation the parents are in. They may see a big house, or newer cars, etc... but don't realize that the parents are in debt up to their eyeballs.</p>
<p>Maybe more parents need to have serious discussions with their children several years before they graduate. My children already know that PLUS Loans and Alternative Loans are out of the question for college. We have discussed the financial issues and ways they can obtain a decent college education without both of us going broke.</p>
<p>NikkiL, my point is that if your college does not promise to meet full need out of its own grant funds if necessary, then it is usually to the college's advantage to have the student be classified as independent, because that will tend to qualify the student for more federal aid, including Pell Grants & subsidized loans. The college is the direct beneficiary when its students qualify for federal aid, because most of those dollars go directly to pay college costs. And the college can still pick and choose which students it wants to extend grant or scholarship money to, and is under no obligation whatsoever to avoid gaps -- so the college can benefit by retaining students who are themselves incurring a tremendous amount of debt to attend college.</p>
<p>It is very different when the college has undertaken a promise to meet full need. If the parents are paying, then the college will be making up the difference, and for obvious reasons they aren't going to want to do that when the parents clearly are well off enough to be contributing. Those colleges really don't want to make it easy for kids to be independent, and they have internal policies that reflect that attitude. </p>
<p>For example, I mentioned the option of student marriage above. It is clear under FAFSA rules that a married student = an independent student. However, my daughter's college has a clear written policy that if a student is unmarried at the time of enrollment, and subsequently marries, the student will still be viewed as a dependent of her parents for financial aid purposes. Why? Because the college doesn't want to be faced with a large number of its students marrying at age 19 or 20 and suddenly qualifying for much more aid than when they started.</p>
<p>at many schools that meet 100% demonstrated need using their own funds they have policies that state if you enter as a dependent student, you will be a dependent student until you graduate (regardless or marriage, birth of children etc). </p>
<p>I guess the exception would be if both parents parents were to die during undegrad (even then i would have doubts as when my parents passed with in one ear of each other during undergrad, the FA office said then that my FA was based on the previous years earnings and I did not get more aid as a result).</p>
<p>I understand that they are independent as far as the FAFSA and obtaining federal aid is concerned. </p>
<p>But schools that disburse their own institutional funds and large amounts of it are most likely not FAFSA only schools and would be less likely to say that parents are no longer part of the equation.</p>
<p>Nikkiil said: "When someone marries into an existing family, he/she needs to understand that the children are a part of the package. Any man who told me "I'll marry you but I won't support your children" would be kicked to the curb instantly."</p>
<p>That's a choice you might make for yourself, but life is complicated, and the choices people make are, too. My current partner and I met while I did not have custody of my children. He was very clear up front that he did not want to have children himself, that his life plans for himself did not include children. I was fine with that, because of the custody situation. Of course, life happens, and within a couple of years, it became clear that my children needed to be living with me. Rather than end our relationship, we worked out a compromise that we've maintained to this day, about responsibility and financial division. My children and my partner have a great relationship together, and our household "works" as a family, but my partner does not consider himself a parent, and the children really <em>like</em> that about him. Because my partner and I have agreed that he is not financially responsible for my children, I doubt we will ever marry. </p>
<p>Now, my mother, faced with some of the same issues as a divorced parents of teenagers, took a completely different path. Looking back I realize that had I not become independent by marriage as I did, my financial aid situation would have been awful, because my mother remarried a man who was cash poor but had land assets, right about the same time. Hmm!</p>