FAFSA and the Modern Family

One of the financial aid questions I get more than any other revolves around students from nontraditional families. Nontraditional families come in many different forms. Most commonly, that term means that a child’s biological mother and father are not married and/or do not live in the same household. When that happens it results in various financial circumstances and arrangements. In that case, trying to figure out how to file the FAFSA can be maddening.

The most foundational of rules a nontraditional family should use when completing the FAFSA is that the family should use the financial information from the parent the student spends the most time with. So if a student lives with mom during the week and stays with dad maybe every other weekend, the student will file their FAFSA with mom, without regard to either parent’s income.

What to do when mom or dad are remarried though? Well, the step parent’s income is also going to be factored into the FAFSA. Regardless of how long the biological parent and stepparent have been married, regardless of whether or not the stepparent has legally adopted the child, if the student spends most of the time in the home of the parent who is married to a stepparent the parent and stepparent’s income should be put on the FAFSA. Actually, FAFSA changed their 2014 to include unmarried couples. So, for example, if mom lives with her boyfriend who she is not even married to, FAFSA expects the boyfriend’s income to be reported. All of these rules now apply to same sex relationships too, by the way.

So what if the students doesn’t live with mom or dad? Maybe they live with a grandparent, or uncle, or even a friend. The first thing you have to do here is to look more closely at the student’s situation. Has the student been declared homeless by their school? Are both parents deceased? Is the student a foster child? Have they been fully emancipated? If any of those are the case, the child is considered independent and should file their own FAFSA using their own income. My experience, however, is that these situations are less common. What is a more likely scenario is that living with someone like a grandparent, who is not a parent, is just a better situation for the child. In that case, a parent or both parents are still around and the parent’s income should be used on the FAFSA, even if they don’t see the student a whole lot or provide any support. If the parents are truly deadbeats, the student hasn’t seen them in years, or they flat out refuse to complete the FAFSA--that’s when a student needs to start considering whether or not they should be declared homeless. They can discuss that with their high school officials.

The definition of a family can be complicated. There are endless possibilities and each can create a different set of circumstance when it comes to FAFSA. When in doubt, a student’s best recourse is to discuss their situation with a financial aid officer at the schools they are interested in. That’s what those people are there for and they are financial aid experts. At the end of the day, as a high school counselor, the best advice I can give when questions like any of the above come up is to pick up the phone and call the college.