<p>Hello, Before any of you say that I should not get married for financial aid, please listen: MY FIANCE AND I ARE GOING TO GET MARRIED AND NOT FOR FINANCIAL AID. What I need help on deciding is how soon we should get married and If waiting would benefit or harm us in our future together. </p>
<p>I have an EFC of $0 because my father is disabled and gets SSI/Disability.
My Fianc</p>
<p>Your EFC will based on you and your husband’s income when you marry. It sounds like his EFC will go down and yours will stay the same. </p>
<p>How much will you and he be earning?</p>
<p>You have to be married at the time you file FAFSA. You can’t go back and change it for that year. So, for this coming school year, your EFCs won’t change if you’ve already filed FAFSA.</p>
<p>I will make around $5,000 a year and he will make around $3000. We pay very little rent and are full time students. We live with his parents, but pay them rent.</p>
<p>I think with that income once you guys are married the EFC for both of you would be 0 or very near it. My husband and I make about 22k a year combined (all him though, he works full time and we are both full-time students) and our EFC is the same, 3400 each. I would use one of available online EFC calculators though.</p>
<p>Why not get married?</p>
<p>For them, it’s fine; they’ll make out better. But for some, it can be a pitfall. Grad students are often doing the calcualtions to see if it would make a difference in their aid if they are married. Being independent is not always a nirvana for financial aid. </p>
<p>You do have to use the calculators. If a PROFILE school is involved, you need to talk to the fin aid office. Some refuse to recognize married status if the marriage occurs after the student is in school and aid has been determined with the parents.</p>
<p>For them, it’s fine; they’ll make out better. But for some, it can be a pitfall. Grad students are often doing the calcualtions to see if it would make a difference in their aid if they are married. Being independent is not always a nirvana for financial aid. </p>
<p>You do have to use the calculators. If a PROFILE school is involved, you need to talk to the fin aid office. Some refuse to recognize married status if the marriage occurs after the student is in school and aid has been determined with the parents.</p>
<p>As mentioned, you cannot file as married if you have already filed a FAFSA for 2012-13. If you have not filed it yet, though, wait until after you are married & then file … unless doing so will cause you to miss out on grants. In that case, you may be better off filing as dependent this year to get in on the extra money (you will qualify … he may not) … then file independent due to marriage nice & early next year for maximum aid.</p>
<p>I’ve recently read on a few college websites that “New for 2012-2013, students can submit their application as a single person, then later update the application to reflect a marriage”. Is anyone familiar with this change?</p>
<p>from Finaid.org (hopefully someone like Kelsmom can fully decipher what the latest is… :)</p>
<p>The FAFSA cannot be updated for mid-year changes in an applicant’s marital status. If the student expects to be married in the near future, they should carefully consider whether to submit the FAFSA before or after they are married. What matters is the date the FAFSA was completed, not the date it was signed or processed. (The signatures on the FAFSA or signature sheet attests to the accuracy of the information on the FAFSA as of the date the form was completed, not the date the form was signed.)
For example, suppose an unmarried student submits the FAFSA online on Friday with a marital status of “married”, anticipating her wedding that weekend, gets married on Sunday, and signs and mails the signature sheet on Monday. For federal student aid purposes she will be considered unmarried because she was not married on the date the FAFSA was completed. Likewise if the student initially completes the FAFSA as single and changes it online to married before signing and mailing the signature sheet. Corrections are only permitted when the marital status on the date the FAFSA was completed was inaccurate, not when the marital status changed after that date.</p>
<p>If there is any question as to whether the applicant was married, the school will ask for a copy of the marriage certificate and compare the date on the certificate with the application date on the SAR/ISIR.</p>
<p>**But, on another page, there is a change regarding student marital status… **</p>
<p>Student Remarries after Application Date (does this mean only divorced students who remarry??? or does this include singles who marry???)</p>
<p>The regulations concerning updates to an applicant’s marital status have changed, effective 7/1/2012. </p>
<p>Previously the regulations prohibited applicants from updating household size, number in college or dependency status due to a change in the applicant’s marital status (34 CFR 668.55(a)). The new regulations provide the financial aid administrator with the discretion to require an update to a student’s marital status (and corresponding changes in household size, number in college and dependency status) “to address an inequity or to more accurately reflect the applicant’s ability to pay”.</p>
<p>The discussion of the final rule at 75 FR 66832 allows a college to establish “a cut-off date after which it will not consider any updates to a student.s marital status”.</p>
<p>Thus there are now two reasons why a student might change the answer to the FAFSA question concerning the student’s marital status:</p>
<p>Correction. If the answer on the FAFSA was incorrect as of the FAFSA application date, the applicant may change the answer to correct the error.</p>
<p>Update. If the answer on the FAFSA was correct as of the FAFSA application date, but has subsequently changed, the college financial aid administrator may choose to allow or disallow a change to the answer on the FAFSA.</p>
<p>In both cases the change in status should be reviewed by the college financial aid administrator. Financial aid administrators should look for comment code 75 to identify students who have changed the student’s marital status.</p>
<p>If the student says that the marital status was in error, the financial aid administrator should ask for a copy of the marriage certificate and compare the date of the certificate with the FAFSA’s application date.</p>
<p>Note that if a student failed to sign and date a FAFSA application (whether in paper or online), there are two dates to consider: the original date the FAFSA was submitted and the date the FAFSA was signed. Most financial aid administrators will base a decision as to whether a change in the applicant’s marital status is a correction or update on the original submission date, not the date the FAFSA was signed, as the submission date is the date the application was completed and the signature is merely attesting to the accuracy on that date. That’s why the FAFSA asks for the date the form was completed and not the date it was signed.</p>
<p>**If the marital status was not in error, but has subsequently changed, the college financial aid administrator will need to decide whether to allow or disallow the change. ** The regulations allow but do not require the college financial aid administrator to update the FAFSA information for marital status, and make corresponding changes to household size, number in college and dependency status if this is necessary to:</p>
<p>address an inequity
reflect more accurately the applicant’s ability to pay
This is a less stringent standard than previously, where the college financial aid administrator would have needed to argue that there was a special circumstance (other than the change in marital status) that merited an adjustment.</p>
<p>Circumstances for which the college financial aid administrator might allow an update to the student’s marital status include, but are not limited to, the following:</p>
<p>Death of a spouse. The death of a wage-earner yields a significant change in the applicant’s ability to pay.</p>
<p>Divorce or separation due to incarceration or incapacitation of spouse.</p>
<p>Divorce or separation due to a court protection from abuse order against the spouse.
Note that the circumstances causing a change in marital status do not need to be involuntary in nature. Note also that the change in marital status does not need to be only in the direction of dissolution of a marriage due to death, divorce or separation. It can also include changes due to the marriage of the student.</p>
<p>The decision is left to the discretion of the college financial aid administrator partly to allow colleges to manage the administrative burden associated with mid-year marital status changes. This also allows college financial aid administrators to ensure the accuracy of a change in the applicant’s marital status, since such changes are prone to error and fraud.</p>
<p>If the applicant’s marital status is updated, the rest of the FAFSA must also be updated to be consistent with the new status. This includes updates to household size, number in college and dependency status, as well as adjusting for the income and assets of the student’s spouse.</p>
<p>There’s a new reject (21) and corresponding override to implement this change.</p>
<p>The previous prohibition on updates to the applicant’s marital status was probably motivated by a desire to provide stability in the applicant’s marital status. Most of the other potential causes of a dependency status change are permanent state changes that do not result in a flip-flop. For example, birth of a child, becoming a veteran, and becoming an orphan generally do not change back and forth. Marital status is the only one that could potentially change many times throughout the year. (Technically, the snapshot philosophy of need analysis entails allowing no changes. So rather than disallowing updates caused by a change in the student’s marital status, the old regulations were simply not allowing it as an exception, presumably because a change in the student’s marital status could affect the student’s dependency status, leading to significant changes in financial aid eligibility.)</p>
<p>What an amazingly thorough post, Mom2college kids! Also, I want to share the information I just rec’d from the FinAid office. My daughter has not filed the FAFSA yet. She was torn about the status question since she’s getting married on July 28. The school said to wait until the day after she gets married to submit the FAFSA and it would be processed in time for the 2012-2013 school year.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>If the school has given this advice, then I’d take it. </p>
<p>And, if the school is FAFSA only, and really mostly only gives fed aid, then that’s probably the wisest choice. If she wouldn’t be Pell-qualified as your dependent, then I don’t think she has anything to lose, and only more to gain, by waiting. </p>
<p>She may not get work-study or SEOG at that point, but she wouldn’t likely get those either if her EFC is higher as your dependent.</p>
<p>What would her EFC be as your dependent? What will it be as a married student?</p>
<p>This is a change that I knew about before I left financial aid, as it was covered in a federal regulations training workshop I attended in the spring of 2011. You will notice that the examples given are for separation, divorce, and death … allowing the aid administrator to change income for students the way they could always do for parents in such situations, if they deemed it correct for the situation. When the only reason a student becomes independent is through marriage, many (I would bet most) aid administrators are not going to be eager to update marital status. They <em>can</em> - but they don’t have to do so. I am betting most are doing what mlesMom’s D’s school is doing … telling students to wait until they are actually married to file.</p>
<p>Hi mom2college kids. Yes, her school is mostly Federal aid. She’s never qualified for any aid other than Stafford (she’s going to be a senior). Even on last year’s FAFSA, which reflected my husband being unemployed the entire year of 2010. Our tax return showed $0 earned income for him, $10K for me; $31K unemployment benefits; household size 5 with 2 in college! We first depleted our emergency savings. But after being unemployed for 2 years, we had no choice but to take money from our children’s college mutual funds and his 401K. These items inflated our gross income, which increased our EFC.</p>
<p>At the same time, Child #2, a HS senior, was also only awarded a Stafford loan. Her dream of going to a 4-year university was over – we couldn’t afford to send her. (I tell ya’, as a parent, that was the second hardest thing I ever had to tell her – the first was several years earlier when we told her she had cancer).</p>
<p>Back to child #1. She gets married on July 28. I understand she has to include her husband’s income on her FAFSA. That would make total income $33K, household size 2, both in college. I told her not to expect anything but Stafford. What she’s hoping for is the extra $5K in Stafford loan with the independent student status. It is what it is, and I just hope everything works out for her. ;)</p>
<p>Did she end up getting any money from her fafsa even after waiting until july to file? did he wait too, or file as a dependent? my fiance and i are torn as well for applying and our wedding date is in the beginning of august. however, i may not qualify for much at all as a dependent anymore, so i wonder if i have any to lose as well by waiting.</p>
<p>Yes, her school did not lead us wrong. She waited till after the wedding to submit her FAFSA. She was awarded a Pell Grant and her Stafford loan was partially subsidized. If she filed before the wedding, she would not have rec’d the Pell and none of the student loan would have been subsidized, because her EFC would’ve been higher as our dependent. Her husband had filed his FAFSA back in January when they were engaged – due to his age he was already considered an independent student.</p>
<p>And despite submitting the FAFSA only a month before school started, everything was processed in time!</p>