mother refuses to give info for CSS Profile

Paying for College
21

And free advice. If you do happen to figure out a way to pay to attend school this year…please get tuition insurance. Make sure it will cover if you need to take a leave to care for your mom.

Please, talk to a trusted family member, counselor or clergy person. You and your mom need someone to help.

And agree…draw your sisters into this discussion about your mom. They are her daughters too.

22

Tough situation - sorry you’re so stuck financially. I think the advice to take a LOA sounds correct, for several reasons.

  1. As stated upthread, you simply need time to sort this out.
  2. The worst-case scenario is that you will not be able to continue school until you establish complete financial independence in order to get financial aid based on your own income and resources rather than your mom’s. Once you are 24 - less than three years from now - this will be easier to accomplish. Prior to that, it is harder but not necessarily impossible. Either way, the first step is to establish an income so that if need be, you can demonstrate that you are not receiving financial support from your mom. Might as well take a year and start laying that groundwork. Get a job that is relevant to your major/career if you can.

If things get straightened out during your time off and your mom’s resources become available again to pay for college, great! If not, at least you’ll be on the road to eligibility for aid as an independent student.

Good luck with all of it - I’m sure it must be very frustrating.

23

“PS: pls do not speak on relationships you know nothing about”

Fair enough, but I work for a CPA firm and I’ve seen this “relationship” MANY times. Is it possible your mother is dead broke, if not deeply in debt? And she is embarrassed to admit that by sharing financial information you might see. And her accountant is not filing her taxes or giving her stuff back because she owes him a lot of money, and she won’t return HIS calls because she is embarrassed to owe him and terrified of the IRS?

At any given time, my employer will have several such clients.

I hope I’m wrong here. Something tells me that you are up against more than you know right now. I don’t have as much experience with college finance as a lot of the parents on this board, but if my perspective helps someone come up with a better or creative solution so you don’t have to leave school, I wanted to get it out there.

24

Sorry if I missed this but did you speak with the school fin aid folks?

25

@aquapt

This is a 21 year old. Even IF she is fully self supporting, she won’t be considered independent for financial aid proposes until she is 24 years old.

26

I think I said that. I know (and it has been said already in this thread) that she cannot establish independence in just one year. It won’t be easy/automatic until she is 24 and demonstrably self-supporting. There may be recourse to accomplish this before she is 24, but it definitely wouldn’t be just a one-year process and it would require more extraordinary measures for sure. My point was… worst case scenario, she is stuck until she is 24. (Which, if she’s 21-and-11-months, could mean just two academic years, but more likely 2.5 or 3.) Hopefully not - hopefully she can either get her mom’s financials sorted out or jump through the necessary hoops to establish independence earlier. But if financial independence is going to be the path forward, a history of self-support will need to be established. That was my only point.

27

Good to know

28

You’ll need to make an appointment with the financial aid office about this. They would best be able to give you the info you need.

29

Don’t take a leave of absence until you sit down with financial aid and figure out what they can do for you, in your situation. Make an appointed today, via email and follow it up with a call. Call the head of financial aid and ask for who you should talk with. You are half way through a very expensive private college, is my understanding. They may be motivated for you to finish the second two years, especially if you are qualifying for federal financial aid, which it seems you do, and the FAFSA is complete. Since its the mortgage you say is missing, has she refinanced the house? Can you find her mortgage statements yourself in your mom’s office and simply fill the information by yourself?

Chances are , her mortgage payments are exactly the same as the year before, if she has not refinanced the home.
Sorry you are going through this harsh situation.

30

I would never recommend or suggest pawing through the personal financial documents of another person without that person’s knowledge and/or permission. Bad idea.

31

But critical to sit down with the right folks in the college FA dept.
If we’re talking about pulling a rabbit out of a hat or a last minute Hail Mary, you have to start with the people at your college, who deal with this year in and year out.

None of us can promise you what will happen. But there are cases where FA can rework the info they have available. You need to be diplomatic and respectful.