<p>Okay, so here's the deal. My parents are divorced, but on relatively good terms. I spend my time relatively equally between the two households. The question is should I report the financial information for my father (technically a single parent) or my mother who is married, but whose combined income is about 20% less than that of my father? Essentially, which will result in a lower EFC. I plan on attending a private liberal arts college that will meet "100% of demonstrated need" so I'm trying to better my aid package.</p>
<p>If you truly spend EQUAL time with each of your parents, the FAFSA requirement is to use the parent who provides more of your support, and this is usually the parent with the higher income.</p>
<p>Well, my parents track my expenses and actually have devised a system wherein they both pay half of my total expenses. What does that mean?</p>
<p>If you live with one parent MORE than 1/2 the time, you list that parent as your custodial parent on the FAFSA.</p>
<p>If all is “equal”…you are required to list the parent with the higher earnings.</p>
<p>If the LAC meets need, are you sure that they don’t expect you to provide info about BOTH parents?</p>
<p>Often schools that “meet need” require CSS Profile as well…and will require all parents’ info.</p>
<p>Which LAC is this? Carleton College?</p>
<p>if it is CC, then that school WILL require all parents (including step) incomes…</p>
<p>So, FAFSA is not really your worry…the fact that all incomes will count may be your concern.</p>
<p>It looks like from a previous post, you were accepted ED to CC. Didn’t you get a FA pkg? What was it?</p>
<p>Yes, I did receive a package, and didn’t particularly like the figure that it listed. I did already submit the CSS Profile but I was just curious as to whether one submitted parent or another would give me any benefits in terms of the FAFSA. Thank you for all the help, I will probably proceed submitting the information of my father, considering that’s technically where my permanent address is.</p>
<p>Institutional aid will not be based on FAFSA if your school is using Profile and requires the NCP. In that case, FAFSA will only determine your eligibility for federal/state aid. The Pell grant requires an EFC around $5300 or less so it may not make any difference at all which parent you use. Btw, since there are an odd number of days in the year, it’s unlikely you spend an equal amount of time with each parent.</p>
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<p>If your father’s is your permanent address you are REQUIRED to use him as the custodial parent. You cannot switch parents for financial aid gain only. To do so would be considered fraud.</p>
<p>Your aid from CC isn’t going to be based on FAFSA, since they use CSS profile to kind of supersede FAFSA.</p>
<p>FAFSA will only be used by CC to determine if your EFC is low enough to get a Pell Grant, work study or fed loans. It doesn’t sound like either set of parents earns so little that you’d get a Pell Grant. </p>
<p>Even if one parent’s income did qualify for a Pell Grant, the school would just substitute that for an equal amount of institutional aid. For instance, if the school determined that you should get a $30k grant from CC…and then FAFSA determined that you should get a 5k grant from Pell, the school would add in the 5K Pell Grant and reduce it’s aid to 25k. It’s not like you’d get the same aid from CC and the Pell Grant. </p>
<p>The reason CC uses CSS Profile with NCP info is for exactly the reason you’re asking your question. They know that divorced families have two separate incomes… and that FAFSA alone would only give them the info about one family…the school wants to use CSS Profile info (not FAFSA info) to determine how much the entire family should contribute.</p>
<p>Didn’t you get your ED results awhile ago? Haven’t you already had to commit to CC by now? If your parents can’t/won’t pay the amount that CC expects, what are you going to do?</p>