How Living with Grandparents Can Affect Student Aid
Children are living with their grandparents for a variety of reasons. Their parents may be in jail or a mental institution, addicted to drugs or alcohol or even deceased. In some cases, parents have neglected or abandoned their children and grandparents are forced to become parents a second time.
So what happens when these children are no longer children and its time for them to go to college or a trade school? Who pays for it and how do they pay for it?
Like most students, regardless of who they live with, those who live with grandparents will probably get the lion’s share of their funding from federal student aid programs. But one of the basic assumptions underlying federal student aid programs is that parents have the primary responsibility for paying for their children’s education. Federal student aid is intended to pay what the parents cannot pay.
Regardless of whether students live with their parents or not, they are generally considered dependents of their parents until they are 24 years old. As a result, the parents income (along with the student’s) must be considered when determining the student’s eligibility for aid. (If a student is independent, only the student’s income is considered.)
A student is not considered independent of his or her parents just because the student lives with a grandparent or grandparents, nor is that student considered a dependent of his or her grandparent(s) unless a grandparent has legally adopted the student.
Dependence or independence is determined according to criteria that Congress established when the federal student aid programs were set up. For the 2006-07 academic year, a student is considered an independent student if he or she meets as least one of the following criteria:
1)The student was born before January 1, 1983.
2)The student will be enrolled in a master’s or doctoral program (beyond a bachelor’s degree) at the beginning of the 2006-07 academic year.
3)The student is married on the day he or she applies (even if the student is separated but not divorced).
4)The student has children who receive more than half of his or her support from the student.
5)The student has dependents (other than a child or spouse) who live with the student and who receive more than half their support from the student at the time he or she applies and through July 2, 2007.
6)Both of the student’s parents are deceased, or the student is (or was until age 18) a ward or dependent of the court.
7)The student is a veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces. (A “veteran” includes students who attended a U.S. service academy and were released under a condition other than dishonorable.)
If a student meets none of these criteria, he or she must provide at least one parent’s income. Most students must provide parental income until they are 24. In special or unusual circumstances, however, a student may be able to be declared independent before reaching this age. This declaration is called a “special determination of independence” or a “dependency override.”
The school’s financial aid administrator must have the student declared independent. A student doesn’t merit such a declaration just because he or she lives alone and provides his or her own financial support (even if the student can prove it); federal student aid programs do not recognize any category of “emancipated” student. It cannot be done simply because the student or parent believes that a relationship no longer exists. A financial aid administrator may declare a student independent only in severe cases: when parents have abandoned the student (for example, when parents can’t even be found) or when parents are in jail or in a mental institution, have serious substance abuse problems or are in some other way incapacitated.
Then, on a case-by-case basic, the financial aid administrator decides whether the student is no longer under a parent’s care and whether a parent’s income must be considered.
Many students who live with one or more grandparents are likely candidates for a special determination of independence, in which the financial aid administrator determines that the student does not have to include parental income on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). But this is not always the case. If students do have to include parental income, they should remember that listing a low income for the parent(s) may actually help the student (if the income of the parent or parents is low enough).
As always, a student should contact the school’s financial aid administrator for questions about his or her status or to determine if he or she qualifies for a special determination of independence.
A good source of general information about federal student aid is the free booklet, Funding Education Beyond High School: The Guide to Federal Student Aid, which a student can request by calling the Federal Student Aid Information Center (FSAIC) at 1-800-4-FED-AID (1-800-433-3243).
Another good source of information is the Department’s Web site at www.studentaid.ed.gov.
