Hello all.
I need to change my custodial parent to my divorced Father.
I am planning on moving out of my mother’s home and into my Father’s condo before January 2016.
All of my questions are regarding the Fall 2016- Spring 2017 school year, not the upcoming Fall 2015- Spring 2016 school year.
My mother has refused to continue supporting the cost of my education and her high income is ruining my ability to continue as a student. I am a rising junior. My grades are fine btw, overall gpa 3.3, major gpa 3.81. My mom is just purely selfish.
Moving on.
How can I prove that I will have lived with my father for the majority of the 2015-2016 academic school year if I plan to live on campus? I need to do this otherwise I will have to drop out due to lack of money. My mother would be happy if I dropped out and would not be able to finish – I can’t let this happen.
Go onto your personal information page and change the information. You probably won’t have to prove it to anyone, just declare that you live with your father more days immediately before you file the next FAFSA.
The custodial parent is the parent you lived with most the year before you file FAFSA in 2016. So you just put your father down and you make sure that for the days you were not on campus you spent more nights with father than mother. Then, voila, he is the custodial parent. I would change your driver’s license and bank account and such to his address asap, register to vote there and car reg if you have one. Those are usual indications of residency should anyone ask.
And change your permanent address at college to you father’s as well.
When/if you file your 2015 tax return please be sure to use your dad’s address as your home address.
The rule is that for the 12 months prior to the day you file your FAFSA, you spent more nights at your dad’s than your mom’s.
For example, if you lived on campus 250 days, and spent 62 nights at mom’s and 63 nights at dad’s place then you are golden.
Depending on when the OP files fafsa, it may already be too late for the 2016-17 fafsa if all of summer was spent at mom’s. And it’s going to depend on Dad’s income and the school as to whether there will be any additional aid anyway. Fafsa is only for federal aid and sometimes state aid and there usually isn’t much of that. Schools that only use fafsa for their aid generally aren’t the schools with very good aid.
Post #1 appears to be encouraging fraud. I also think that since this would be a change both in custodial parent and parent income/assets from previous fafsas, that it likely will need to be demonstrated that it is a valid change.
^^ Not at all. I was telling him to change his permanent address with the school which is what he seemed concerned about. I should have been more clear that he actually has to count the days he’s lived with his father can follow the instructions for who is the fafsa custodial parent, but it is not difficult to change the records at the school.
There is no one who is going to question his claim to having spent more time with one parent. It’s his obligation to count and it doesn’t depend on who claims him on taxes or whose name is on the school records; it is up to the student to honestly report who the custodial parent is according to the fafsa definition, not the IRS definition or the divorce decree definition.
He also doesn’t have to file the FAFSA in January. He can wait until he has spent more days with his father, be that in April or June. It doesn’t sound like he’d be losing anything by waiting since his mother makes too much to qualify for need based aid through her anyway.