<p>My parents are married but do not live together. They have been separated for nearly 10 years and I live only with my mother. They filed their taxes jointly. My mother receives child support from my father.</p>
<p>For my parent's 2009 adjusted gross income, do I need to list their combined incomes or only my mother's, from her W-2 form? Also do I need to list my father's other information? Right now I have my mother's income from her W-2 listed. For my parent's income tax for 2009, would this be the taxes from my mother's W-2 form?</p>
<p>I've been selected for verification and am anticipating problems because of this. Should I submit any corrections at this point if I filled it out incorrectly? Or will my school correct it upon receiving the documents they requested?</p>
<p>I just worked on a file like yours this morning! You will need to submit the tax form, all W2’s, and anything that will help the financial aid officer split out your mom’s income from your dad’s (schedules, any other documents they submitted with their tax return, any unemployment information, etc). The financial aid officer will use that information to make sure the information your mom put on the FAFSA is correct when compared to the tax return they submitted.</p>
<p>It’s not a problem, as long as the parent marital status was reported as divorced/separated on the FAFSA. You may also be asked for documentation that they are separated (court order, proof of separate addresses, that sort of thing).</p>
<p>Kelsmom: if they were separated, wouldn’t they be filing that way? Especially since the custodial parent could claim HOH. Why would FAFSA allow two parents who are married and file that way, to claim only the income from one parent?</p>
<p>“FAFSA” doesn’t care how people file. Parents who are legally separated are legally allowed to continue to file jointly, to my knowledge. Why they would file that way, I don’t ask. If two parents are legally separated, though, the federal financial aid regulations state that only the income/assets of the custodial parent are reported. So if the parents file jointly but are legally separated, the information from the custodial parent has to be separated out from the joint return. I have to actually do the tax calculations myself to make sure it was reported correctly … and I don’t even like doing my own return!</p>
<p>3bb103 perhaps neither is interested in getting married soon. Perhaps they are postponing the financial wear and tear by separating but not divorcing. Perhaps their joint taxes benefit them more than filing individually. One never knows. The bottom line is the Federal income taxes forms have different stipulations than the FAFSA.</p>
<p>3bm103, this could be a negotiated thing or could just be because they are separated and attempting to reconcile. Say the low income spouse, typically the wife, has custody of the kids and receives child support. If she doesn’t meet the income thresholds, she has no need to file, HOH or otherwise. Why not give the breadwinner the preferential filing status? Or, if she does work, she can file HOH, doesn’t have to declare child support, and can take exemptions for the kids (unless she has agreed not to). But the separated H, who is also supporting the household, must file separately and gets slammed on taxes. He may be willing to make certain concessions regarding support, assets, etc. until divorce is finalized (there are a surprising number of people, myself included, who don’t finalize for years) in return for the joint filing status. FAFSA sort of equalizes the situation by considering wife’s child support in the equation but disregarding the rest of H’s income, which is going to support his other household.</p>