<p>Allyphoe, I don’t think the returns have to match, FAFSA and tax in terms of custodial parent. I know too many that do not. Kelsmom, Sybbie and others directly involved in the process can comment. My friend whose son is at BU right now is the custodial parent for her son. Since her ex is local and her son spends time at the dad like the OP does, he made sure that the time spent was more with Dad than with her so that the FAFSA and PROFILE forms could be filed with him as the custodial parent. Yes, it made a difference in aid at some schools, but not all. SOme didn’t meet need anyways, and some counted the non custodial parents heavily, but some schools do not treat non custodial income quite the same way as it does Custodial.</p>
<p>allyphoe is just pointing out a subtlety in the 1040 on line 6. There are 2 questions:</p>
<p>Number of children on line 6c who live with you ___
Number of children on line 6c who do not live with you due to divorce or separation ___</p>
<p>If the parent checks the former statement then that parent should be the one filing FAFSA for the child. If the parent has checked the former statement but a different parent fills out FAFSA, then there’s an internal inconsistency.</p>
<p>If the parent checks the latter statement then that parent shouldn’t be the one filing FAFSA for the child, even though the child may be a qualifying dependent for tax purposes.</p>
<p>Returns do not have to match. It doesn’t matter who claimed the kid on tax returns. Aid administrators have to look at a lot of things on the tax return, but the one thing they don’t need to look for is whether or not a particular parent could have or should have taken the tax deduction for a particular child.</p>