<p>Please help! I have lived with my grandmother since 2009, and she is my legal guardian. It was a voluntary guardianship switch, but I receive NO assistance from my father and haven't for years. Will I have to try to apply for a dependency override?</p>
<p>Is she your legal guardian by court order (even though voluntary)?</p>
<p>A local lawyer received the papers from the court, and my father signed over guardianship to her. So, she is my caretaker. Although, her becoming my legal guardian was fairly recent because we couldn’t get a hold of my father to do it. However, he hasn’t provided for me in years.</p>
<p>If you have court papers assigning guardianship to your grandmother prior to age 18, you will be considered independent for financial aid purposes…no parent info needed at all, and none from grandma either.</p>
<p>You will need to hang on to those documents as likely you will be asked for them to verify that you are indeed in guardianship.</p>
<p>There will be a question on the FAFSA asking if you have been in legal guardianship…your answer will be YES if so ordered, and that will make you independent for FAFSA purposes.</p>
<p>Here is one reference on the gov page, Item #10, I think. So you do not list your parent or grandparent info, only yours.
<a href=“https://fafsa.ed.gov/fotw1415/help/fftoc02k.htm”>https://fafsa.ed.gov/fotw1415/help/fftoc02k.htm</a></p>
<p>The above info is correct - no dependency override needed. However, you will be asked at some point to submit a copy of the guardianship paperwork to the school, so have that ready.</p>