<p>Why does my son who has left the house, had a full time job, previously attended college full time, recevied pell grant need our income info? He is twenty, his father and I divorced 16 years ago, he moved in with his father at 18 then out on his own. He had to move back in with me and my husband this past year due to economy. I am not complaining about that, but we will be unable to use him on our taxes and he will be leaving the home again as soon as finances allow. Why do I have to provide mine and my husbands income information?</p>
<p>I went to grad school at 27. I had been on my own for several years and even had a dependent child of my own. They STILL wanted my parents financial info. I was eventually able to convince them that I was independent, but it took a lot of talking. Ridiculous.</p>
<p>Mama, your son does not meet the definition of an independent student for financial aid. Note that this is different than being able to claim him as a dependent on taxes. The two are not connected. </p>
<p>The fact that he has a job and had lived on his own is irrelevant. He is 20 years old so your income and assets are used for calculating FA. To be independent for FA he had to be 24, married, a veteran, have a dependent for which he provides >50% of support. If he does not fall into one of those categories he is not independent. Those are the rules.</p>
<p>The dependency rules for FAFSA have nothing to do with dependency rules for taxes. To be independent for FAFSA you must meet certain criteria as listed by Iron maiden. At 20 he is considered a dependent for FA purposes. You don’t have to provide your information. But without it he will not be eligible for aid.</p>
<p>My son was the same when he returned to school at 22 after living independently for several years. He was still living independently, but we had to provide parent info on FAFSA until the year he turned 24.</p>
<p>If the rules allowed a 20 year old to be independent for financial aid, then you can bet my son would be taking a double-gap year. And so would I (on a very nice beach). It would be like a free $200,000 plus over 4 years - nice vacation.</p>
<p>I guess that’s why the rules are the rules. Surely everybody would figure this out!</p>
<p>I believe a few years back genuinely self supporting students may have been able to qualify as independent. But a lot of people did play the system which is why the current rules are in force. I remember one of my daughter’s friend’s Mom telling me that someone told her to buy her daughter a trailer and put it on their property and have the daughter live in it for the last year of high school so she would be independent for FA! The Mom had no intention of doing it, which I told her was a good thing as it would not have worked anyway!!</p>
<p>I qualified as an independent student back in the 70’s. I found it challenging - but I was following the rules, and I guess if nobody was looking over your shoulder it would be easy for people to cheat. </p>
<p>The rules at that time were: you couldn’t be declared as a dependent on your parents’ tax return (which really made a difference for my mom, so she wasn’t happy); you couldn’t accept more than $600 in support from your parents during the year, either in cash or gifts; and you couldn’t live at home for more than 2 consecutive weeks or 6 weeks total during the year.</p>
<p>I couldn’t have done it if I didn’t already have a generous financial aid package and very little help from my parents anyway. The trickiest part was not living at home; I handled this by living in a succession of housesitting jobs over the summers.</p>
<p>Anyway - the independent student path was good while it lasted, but it’s long gone :-).</p>