Full disclosure: I am posting this under my son’s user account. This question relates to his cousin / my niece. She is 21 and the plan is to have her move in with my husband and myself while she attends community college. For many reasons including mental illness, job instability, arrests, bankruptcies and more, neither of her parents are able to provide a stable home environment. I know next to nothing about financial aid as we did not and will not quality for any aid for my son (only child). For my niece, we are planning to provide housing, food, tutoring and half of whatever tutition is not covered by grants. Another sister will be covering the remaining half. My niece will be working to cover books and gas. We do NOT want her to take out loans and are advocating the take it slow and pay for it over time. She is welcome to live in our house as long as she is in school half time with decent grades.
My niece and her mom (my sister) filed the FAFSA using her father’s income based on the question, who did you live with the most? She did live with her father for approx 55-60% of 2015. So far, so good. Initial estimates are that she qualifies for a Pell Grant however they received a letter requiring tax verification. It’s at that point, they find out that her father has not filed taxes for 2014 and wasn’t planning on filing for 2015.
My questions:
If he continues to refuse to file taxes, is there anything that can be done to keep him as the primary parent on the FAFSA?
If no, can the FAFSA be refiled under her mother? How would I go about advising my sister on making this change if needed.
Given the difference in income she would probably lose Pell Grant eligibility. Her mother cannot make up the difference due to her own student loans (in default) and her income for 2016 will likely decrease as she has already been hospitalized twice this year for mental illness and her job is in some jepoardy.
TIA as I honestly don’t have any idea how to proceed.
@twoinanddone he does. Approximate income is around $35K. He intentionally didn’t file to try and force the IRS to pursue my sister for full back taxes and penalties. Now that he hasn’t filed for a few years he’s decided that he “can’t”. It’s a mess on so many levels.
I believe FAFSA is based on the income of the parent the student lived with most during the year prior to filing. If that was her dad, it was her dad. If he’s required to provide tax verification and he refuses to file taxes, the FAFSA application will be incomplete and your niece won’t receive the Pell grant or any state aid that uses the FAFSA to determine eligibility. If her mom makes too much for her to qualify for Pell, filing with her mom’s info. won’t help her anyway.
Do you and your sister expect your niece to repay you after she graduates? If so, it would be better for her to take the federal student loan (max $27k) and owe the government. She doesn’t need the stress of owing family. If she’ll owe more than the federal student loan when she graduates, the schools being considered are too expensive. If she’s attending part-time and you’re gifting her the money, that’s a different story. I’m not sure if she can take the student loan if her dad doesn’t fill out the FAFSA. @sybbie719 can probably answer that.
@austinmshauri No, we don’t expect her to repay anything at all. It’s our gift to her to help her get started in life. We’ve talked about house expectations and they are basically the same as we’ve expected from our son and will expect from him when he’s home from school in the summer. If push comes to shove, my other sister and I will come up with a plan to cover tuition at least through completion of her A.A. Then we can re-evaluate how to proceed from there.
You mentioned arrests and mental illness and such, any way that the D can be considered for a dependency override?
If not and father won’t provide tax information, can she attend a local community college while commuting and working part time until she is 24 and independent for FAFSA?
Is her mother still married to her father? I don’t understand why he thinks that if he doesn’t file taxes the IRS will try to collect from her mom?
That’s very generous of you, @96blue. She’s lucky to have you. The only thing she gains by filing the FAFSA is the ~$5k Pell grant and the ability to take the federal student loan (~$5500/year) if you think you want access to it. It’s great if you can avoid loans though. When parents won’t provide information for the FAFSA the student can still file, but [they won’t qualify for anything but the student loan](https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/filling-out/parent-info#unwilling-parents). Your niece’s dad is so mad at her mom that he’s not willing to help his daughter? That’s pretty sad.
Her father will have to file his taxes if he makes enough money that he is required to file, or get an IRS non-filers statement, if he is not required to file. As other stated, he will probably get a refund. Since schools now use either the IRS data retrieval tool and/or IRS transcripts, non-filers statement to verify income, niece will most likely not receive financial aid (federal or state) if dad does not file taxes.
On a side note: any monies paid by you and your sister on your niece’s behalf, tuition, books, transportation, etc will be taxable income to the student on the next FAFSA.
@mommdc I hadn’t even thought about looking for a dependency override. Thank you for that suggestion! I will look into that and see if she might qualify. I think community college will be the right route for her for a number of reasons. We are hoping that living with us will give her some stability that she just hasn’t had in a long time.
They are divorced and I have no idea why he thinks that not filing is a solution to anything. He’s a mess and would be very content to have her continue living with him, working part time at a minimum wage job. He has actually told my niece that if she moves in with us she will likely be murdered by ISIS because we live close to a Muslim community. I can’t begin to explain how he thinks.
@austinmshauri It is sad. Heartbreaking actually but not surprising given some of the other things that have happened. @sybbie719 I would not have thought of that at all and it’s obviously important. Thank you!