How does a single parent fill in the child support field when there are 2 children in college? Seems each FAFSA asks for the full amount and that doesn’t seem right…
The FAFSA question explicitly requires an answer reporting child support received for any of the parents’ children. FAFSA wants to know what the parent’s income is, including child support. The fact that there are two children in college is dealt with in the EFC calculations for each student.
Just as you include your full income amount for each child’s FAFSA, you do the same for child support. As mentioned, the fact that there are two in college means that the EFC splits.
The FAFSA formula computes an EFC for each child based on two in college at the same time…because you indicate on the form the number of college students.
Colleges using the Profile also know you have two kids in college and compute their aid accordingly.
BUT keep this in mind…even with this, unless the colleges your kid applies to guarantee to meet full need for all, this does not mean you will get a ton of additional need based aid.
Another thing…the FAFSA EFC for two in college is about 50% for each kid. As an example…if you only had ONE kid in college, and that one kid had a $100,000 EFC, with two, each would have about $50,000 EFC (I say about because sometimes kids have income or assets which could make the amounts different).
BUT for Profile schools, it’s about 60% per kid. So $100,000 for one kid would be $60,000 each for two kids.
The OP seems to be worried that since the full child support is listed on each FAFSA then the formula/colleges will think that each child has that much child support. No.
Strange that the OP isn’t worried that his/her full income is listed on each child’s FAFSA. The issue is the same. The formula looks at the total household financial picture and generates an EFC. When there are TWO in college, the generated number is split in two…as it should be.
$80k income listed on FAFSA
$20k child support listed on FAFSA
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$100k total income (assume no assets, household of 3)
If only one child is in college, the EFC would probably be about $32k
If there are two in college, each child’s EFC would probably be about $16k
The calculation can be a little tougher when there is only one parent in the household.