<p>My fiance is currently 19 and her dad currently filed for her fafsa and loans. We have been trying to transfer her to a different school, for that school financial aid was 4000 or 5000$, after all the applications and etc. She is got 7k from the school for having a good gpa, and her dad's already getting her pell grant, staffords and all that and etc. so out of 32k tuition she has about 15k a year left to pay. She doesnt have a job so my AGI is 31k and I pay 4k in federal taxes, so the efc calculator shows our efc as a married couple around 7k. I will marry her no matter what, thats why we are trying to transfer her to a school closer to where we live together instead of 60miles away.
My questions are, if we get married now;Should I file for her and show her as independent? or would it be better to show her as an dependent and let her dad file for her? and if so can I trust the school she is transferring to give us the full fafsa efc financial aid if she were to file as an independent?Also she has a pheaa grant for 4k from her current school, would that transfer as well?</p>
<p>IF she's eligible for Pell, her EFC as a dependent with her parents must be under 4K or so.</p>
<p>If you have flexibility about when to get married, financial-aid wise it looks to be smarter to wait. By getting married, her EFC will go up, and her aid will go down.</p>
<p>First check to see what the policies of the schools she's applying to are. Someone recently posted policies of a couple of schools here that suggested that if you enter as a dependent, you remain a dependent.</p>
<p>It sounds like her financial aid would NOT improve if you were married.</p>