<p>Are we able to include our 23 year old daughter (college graduate), who lives at home. She has a full-time job, is paying her school loans, etc.. but does NOT pay rent or give us money towards food or any other household expenses. She is still covered under our health insurance policy (our employer pays half & we pay half) and we also pay her car insurance.</p>
<p>She will be filing her own tax return (not an exemption for us, this year) but can we still include her as a HOUSEHOLD member on FAFSA?</p>
<p>IF your daughter receives half of her support from you then she can be included in the number of people in the household. However, because she is college graduate, she will not be included in the number of people in college (because she is an independent student).</p>
<p>She has a full-time job, is paying her school loans, etc… but does NOT pay rent or give us money towards food or any other household expenses.</p>
<p>If she’s earning $25k or so per year, I don’t think you’d be able to claim that you’re spending $25k+ per year on her. Providing a free place to stay and even food doesn’t translate to you spending more than she earns.</p>
<p>Thank you for your responses…for some reason I am having a hard time grasping what they mean when they say “receiving more than half of their support.” She makes approx. $40,000.00. I am obviously not spending $40K+ so I guess I will have to exclude her.</p>
<p>For the IRS in determining the dependency of a qualifying child the support test doesn’t care how much the potential dependent child earns, it’s how much of that the child spends to support themselves. Theoretically, a child could earn $40k, save it all, spending nothing on themselves and the parents would be providing more than half the support. But I can’t find anything that says FAFSA follows IRS rules 100% on the support test.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if the loans she’s paying off are in her name, then I would think those payments are support she is providing herself.</p>
<p>We have a slightly different situation. We are currently 100% supporting (she lives at home, we pay for her car, insurance, tuition, phone, etc…) our oldest (22) who will finish her teaching credential and masters in August and hopefully get a job in September. So she is certainly a dependent NOW, but hopefully she won’t be for the 2013/2014 school year. Also, she doesn’t finish until August and they say how many college students will you have July 1 2013 to July 1 2014. Do I put 3 (we have a current jr in college and #3 will start in the fall) or 2? I am thinking I should count #1 as a dependent, but maybe not as a college student.</p>
<p>You can count #1 in the HH size, but not number in college. She is independent for financial aid purposes as a masters student and therefore is her “own” number in college for financial aid.</p>
<p>OK, so I did the FAFSA on the Web Customer Service Live Help and asked if D1 counted as a kid in college even though a. she is getting her masters and b. she will only be in school through August and FAFSA customer service person said that yes she counted and I can put 3 for # of kids in college. Good news!</p>
<p>You should contact the individual schools. The school I worked at before would not allow #1 to be in the # in college - we would have removed her. It could be an unpleasant surprise …</p>