Hi,
I’m trying to help a cousin of mine with her financial aid. My question is which parent does my cousin report. He is claimed by his father through his income tax so does that mean my cousins only reports information for his father. The mother doesn’t claim him. Thank you!
Im kind of confused with the situation still. If I don’t make sense, I can elaborate more.
The rules for FAFSA is to report the custodial parent. It doesn’t matter which claims the student on the taxes. He reports the parent he lives with most.
For the FAFSA and divorced parents, it is the parent (+step parent) the student lived with for more than half of the days in the 12 months before the day the FAFSA is filed.
Who claimed the child for tax purposes does not matter for FAFSA.
It’s the same for schools that use the CSS profile or their own finaid forms in addition to fafsa. The parent lived with the most will be the custodial parent for those forms. But most of those schools will also want the financial info of the non-custodial parent.
Here is the citation for you from the Federal Aid pages:
Divorced or Separated Parents Who Do Not Live Together
If your parents are divorced or separated and don’t live together, answer the questions about the parent with whom you lived more during the past 12 months.
If you lived the same amount of time with each divorced or separated parent, give answers about the parent who provided more financial support during the past 12 months or during the most recent 12 months that you actually received support from a parent.
https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/filling-out/parent-info#who-is-parent