How much financial aid will I get if my parents are divorced?

<p>My parent that I spend most of the week makes around 40,000 dollars a year and my other parent that I spend the other time with makes around 300,000 dollars.He gives my mom child support.How would my financial aid be or would I not get any?</p>

<p>At colleges where you only have to submit FAFSA, all you are asked for is your custodial parent income, and child support is part of that. If your mother is remarried you also have to provide her spouse’s income.</p>

<p>At college where you have to fill out additional forms, like the CSS Profile and provide non custodial parent information then the combined income is used for aid formula’s and you won’t get anything unless that college doesn’t use noncustodial info and that is not as common. (Unless you are granted merit aid.)</p>

<p>You can run the NPC for estimates of what each college you are interested in might cost you. In general the publics are FAFSA only and privates are combined income, but this is not always the case and you need to check each school’s financial aid pages to see what is required.</p>

<p>Some schools do not require non-custodial financial information but they do not include any of the LAC schools in teh Northeast. For those schools that require the NCP, your financial aid will be minimal if any. You Mom does have to include the support she receives both on the CSS profile and the FAFSA but $40K plus child support generally leads to decent aid. Some of the schools we found that do not require non-custodial include University of Scranton, Simmons, St. Michaels and UMass. There’s a list out there that breaks it down, google non-custodial profile list or something like that.</p>

<p>

It would depends on the schools, your custodial parent’s income and asset, and your income and asset. Some schools’ financial aid require your non-custodial parent’s income and asset too. If you could and file the FAFSA, your min financial aid would be $5500 Direct Loans (up to the school’s COA).</p>

<p>Try to run the schools’ NPC to estimate your financial aid; however, the estimation may be less accurate if your parents divorced.</p>

<p>Your dad makes so much money that likely he pays a good bit of child support and may also be paying your mom spousal support. Does he? And are there younger kids in the family? </p>

<p>Where will you be applying to college?</p>

<p>How much has your dad said that he’ll contribute towards college?</p>

<p>There is no way for us to answer your question. The amounts of child and spousal support will need to be reported to the colleges. Those numbers will add to your mom’s income…and could be substantial…or not.</p>

<p>For schools that require non-custodial parent information either via the Profile or their own form, it is likely you will receive a much smaller amount of need based aid…because your dad’s very high incime will be considered.</p>

<p>Run the net price calculator on each college. If the college uses FAFSA only or does not consider the non-custodial parent, you can include only your mother’s income and assets. But most colleges with good financial aid require non-custodial parent information, so you need to include both parents’ income and assets. $300,000+ income will very likely mean getting no need-based financial aid at such schools.</p>