<p>Does it matter if the mother’s bill-paying boyfriend live with the mother?</p>
<p>“Starting with the 2014-2015 FAFSA, which becomes available on January 1, 2014, students will be required to provide information about the adults in their custodial household without regards for marital status or gender.”</p>
<p>It has always been the case that if someone, anyone is paying the STUDENT’s expenses, giving the STUDENT money, it’s supposed to be reported. I think changes in the FAFSA may result in this getting more scrutiny, and certainly if a student is audited where bank statements are examined and an infusion of funds is detected, ti would be an issue.</p>
<p>However, much of that statement you have shown is all about including both parents of the student who may be living together but are not legally married. Up until this year, only the one defined as the custodial parent has to have financials reported (including any child support and of course funds given directly to that student). With the same sex marriage being up in the air with some states recognizing it and others not, FAFSA is simply saying that parents of a student living together, same sex or not, married or not, have to report their financial info. </p>
<p>This can particularly be an issue for those who are already in school and have reaped benefits from being in such situations and not having to include one of the parents’ financial info. It is indeed possible that a drop, even a drastic drop in financial aid can occur. How this will be handled, we don’t yet know. It will vary from school to school, situation to situation, but, it is an issue that is coming up this year.</p>
<p>That does not mean boyfriend/girlfriend info is included. Here is what it means:</p>
<p>• If your legal parents (biological and/or adoptive) are not married to each other and live together, select “Unmarried and both parents living together” and provide information about both of them regardless of their gender. Do not include any person who is not married to your parent and who is not a legal or biological parent.</p>
<p>Has the wife been signing the return? A return cannot be filed jointly without both signatures; you can’t just “put someone on your return.”</p>
<p>Goldenwest,yes, you can… It may not be legal, but, it can be done. And if the wife is getting some benefit allowing the husband to do so, it might not be so wise to stop it. As I wrote earlier, some things are done for reasons that benefit all concerned. </p>
<p>But for FAFSA purposes, which is the issue here, it doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Actually, either party in a marriage can chose ‘married filing separately’ and then the other party is automatically in that category too. I have litigated this. No one can force you to file as married with another person if you don’t want to. In my case, the husband was trying to force my client, the wife, to file that way and actually requested the court to order her to sign or in the alternative, to order the clerk of the court to sign. That didn’t fly, I won and she could file separately, and since her status on the last day of the tax year was ‘married’ she could only file ‘married filing separately’ or file a joint return.</p>
<p>The mom in this case has the same choice - married, or married filing separately. She does not have the choice of HOH or single, as that wasn’t her legal status on Dec 31 “Separated” is a legal status, and would require a court to have issued an order of legal separation (this is not that common, and not even issued if a divorce is pending).</p>
<p>Thumper1’s other arguments are correct - it doesn’t matter!</p>
<p>OP needs to list only the mother’s income (which includes alimony but not child support) and then list the child support on the appropriate line. Other support from the boyfriend doesn’t count as it isn’t income.</p>
<p>A person has a number of choices but the legal solution may not be the best in some situations. </p>
<p>For FAFSA reasons, none of this matters. It would have been a lot cleaner if the mother had filed separately when it comes to verification, however.</p>
<p>For FAFSA purposes, does the OP need to list the mom’s boyfriend’s support of the household as some sort of untaxed other income line item?</p>
<p>No. Only direct support to an independent student needs to be reported (and only if it is money being paid for a bill in the student’s name).</p>