College Costs

[mmace]

Anyone looking into the whole divorce/step-parenting thing and college costs yet? In a nutshell:

My earned income is low, I earned just under $18,000 last year.

Ex husband's income is about $80,000.

His wife (I'm guessing) is at least $50,000.

My sweetie's is around $65,000.

Sweetie and I are considering marrying. He has one son, entering his freshman year of college next month. My kids are 16, 12, and 7.

How does the financial aid process work? Do they look at step-parents income? Both custodial and non-custodial? Any advice?

[Marsupialmom]

http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/

[mtiger]

I'm just about to run to a field hockey game, but just going through all of this. Will respond when I get home.

[pinksprklybarefoot]

When I filled out my FAFSA way back when, they looked at the custodial household's income, so my mom and stepdad's income were what counted.

I wonder what they do in 50/50 cases where there is no custodial parent.

[Marsupialmom]

It isn't always custodial income anymore. Also remember you can always agree (contest) FASFA's first assumption.

18 years ago, I was married and they wanted my parents income -- like that was going to happen. I couldn't get the information and the contesting process was hard. So I didn't go.

A few years later things had changed A LOT. I was able to contest the prior years income because of divorce.

I would be realistic with my child. She/He will be responsible for her own education. Also do your research find out if there is a way to make your child "independent" early or be impoverished. I am not saying your child should get pregnant but my friend's accident got her to the independent status and impoverished so she got so much more aid.

We have another family that is encouraging their children to live there life and experience careers before deciding school. This IMO make sense! How many kids fail out of school because they don't know what they want.

Also, think about tech schools! Trades need so many employees.

[MeepyCat]

I am not saying your child should get pregnant but my friend's accident got her to the independent status and impoverished so she got so much more aid.

I went to school just after having a baby, and even with a loving and supportive partner, it was massively challenging. While my fellow students were meeting up at six o'clock to work on joint projects and go out for beers, I was cramming all my work and studying into the hours the daycare was open. I once had to beg profs to let me take my exams all back to back in the program office (for which read: Please Professor, can I make my midterms more difficult?) so I could rush home to relieve my husband when the baby had stomach flu. While other students were kicking back with cigarettes and coffee, I was locked in a closet, pumping breast milk. My son didn't sleep through the night until he was a year and a half old, so I did the entire masters program sleep depped. I know my GPA would have been better if he'd waited a week to cut molars.

And all that was with my tuition and living expenses (including health insurance and daycare) completely paid. No money worries. Most student parents don't have it as good as I did.

[lalaland42]

Originally Posted by Marsupialmom

I would be realistic with my child. She/He will be responsible for her own education. Also do your research find out if there is a way to make your child "independent" early or be impoverished. I am not saying your child should get pregnant but my friend's accident got her to the independent status and impoverished so she got so much more aid.

This hardly seems like a recipe for blended family harmony or success.

[Marsupialmom]

Originally Posted by lalaland42

This hardly seems like a recipe for blended family harmony or success.

Sadly our system can penalize successful people. Many middle class make enough money to NOT qualify for aid. Plus, you have many young people who do not qualify for aid but have to include their parent's income even though the parents are not paying.

I have seen young adults harmed by the money they saved for college. Enough to cancel aid not enough to pay for school.

It is the recipe that our system has created.

I am a major propionate in changing funding for colleges and technical schools because our current system is pricing education right out of middle class families.

[lalaland42]

First of all, you should never bring a child into the world solely to pay for college. That is asinine. And FTR, the student could also get married or join the military and get the same benefits.

Second, you are advocating that a (potential) stepmom suggest to her stepchild that he impoverish or declare independence to pay for school. Well, I have been on the receiving end of that line of reasoning. That is out of a stepmom's boundaries. Not a good idea if you want your marriage to work out. Nope. Not at all.

[Smithie]

Actually, the OP is the biomom of the kids she is discussing. Her sweetie has a child starting colllege this year, but she is not discussing that.

OP, you have to shut off your emotions and weigh the financial benefits againast the financial costs. How much will it hurt you and the kids not to have your sweetie's health insurance coverage, for example? How much will it hurt you if he dies and you are not his automatic heir? Etc. etc. If you don't need insurance coverage and you wouldn't want to be his heir anyhow, your kids might really benefit from being the "on paper" the kids of a single mom who makes 18k/year. The financial aid system is so screwed up, sometimes we need to make screwy decisions in response to it.

You don't have to make the final decision based on the $$$, but you and your sweetie should BOTH know how much extra you might be expected to pony up for tuition if you marry. It might be very much worth it to you to be married. You might actually decide that you don't care about the $$$. But you need to KNOW, so that you can make an informed choice. Talking to a financial aid counselor at a college your eldest is interested in would be a good starting place.

[Marsupialmom]

Filing the appropriate papers can get you around some of the benefits of a married couple like being heir, executor, who make medical decisions for each other.

[mtiger]

FAFSA will look at the custodial household's finances. Parent and StepParent. Parent and SO, if living in the home. If the child has income and/or savings, that will be included. Than covers needs-based aid. Partially. Some schools (particularly private schools) will require additional information - including the NCP's household finances. Parent and StepParent. Parent and SO, if living in the home.

For my son, FASFA pretty well got him $15k, based on my income (let's leave it at I miss the threshold for free lunch by about $75/mo). Once his Dad/StepMom's income were included in the equation for the private schools he'd applied to? He got nothing more, because his Dad (and StepMom) have significantly higher incomes.

ETA - I forgot to include that he also got ~$10k in academic awards.

[junipermuse]

Can anyone tell me why the system is set up this way? It doesn't make any sense to me that a step-parent, whom in any other circumstance would not be financially obligated to a child, must be counted for income when determining financial aid. I remember when I was going to college, my dad was un-employed (had just been laid off) and my mom was a stay at home mom, but I didn't qualify for any financial aid because of step-father's income. It worked out okay for me because my step-father willingly paid for my education, I never even had to take out a loan, but it would have been well within his rights to refuse to do so. Then what option would I have had. For that matter it seems that the system is really flawed anyway, because any parent has the right to stop supporting their child financially once they turn 18. So we put all these young adults in position where they may have no support to get an education, but also can't get financial aid based on parental income. Isn't there any way to change the system.

[Smithie]

The system is set up this way so that the colleges may extract the maximum amount of money. They don;t so much care who they get it from.

The private college I went to (Smith, if you couldn't guess) was considered very generous in that you could get out of having your NCP's income counted against you. I had a couple of friends with high-earning but unsupportive (like, not one penny after age 18 and only court-ordered support before that) biodads who considered Smith the only feasible choice of all the schools they were accepted to, because Smith was the only school that understood that they effectively had one parent no matter what the birth certificate said. Even at that they had to specifically apply and disclose painful family details to a FinAid counselor to avoid having the NCP income counted.

As to counting the income of your mom's live-in boyfriend (or dad's live-in girlfriend) - I'm floored that that is the practice for any college, public or private. It's just stupid. It puts everybody in the family in a bad position.

[VisionaryMom]

Originally Posted by Marsupialmom

Also do your research find out if there is a way to make your child "independent" early or be impoverished.

This is next to impossible these days. It used to be pretty easy, according to some fin aid counselors I spoke to. Then the government figured out that it was a lie in most cases (people signing documents saying they weren't supporting their child when that wasn't entirely true), so now you have to have a long, drawn-out history of proof to exclude a parent's income.

I went to a private uni. I did not have access to my father's income, and it took months and months of documentation and phone calls to get them to accept that answer. I truly didn't know, and he wouldn't tell me.

Unfortunately I think the system is set up to help people who get married or have babies really young. Everyone else is assumed to be under their parents' financial umbrella until age 24.

[Smithie]

Sorry for the drift but... if one's child did a two-year Peace Corps stint or a mission or something right out of high school, would that make them independent at 20 when they were back in the States living on their own, working and applying for schools?

[bobandjess99]

Originally Posted by Smithie

Sorry for the drift but... if one's child did a two-year Peace Corps stint or a mission or something right out of high school, would that make them independent at 20 when they were back in the States living on their own, working and applying for schools?

Not the way i understand it, here are the criteria.

Independent Status

•You are at least 24 years old on the day you file your FAFSA
•You are or will be enrolled in a masters or Doctoral degree program at the beginning of the school year
•You are married on the day you file your FAFSA
•You are a parent
•You have dependents other than your spouse who live with you and who receive more than half their support from you at the time you apply
•Both your parents are deceased (or were until age 18) a ward of dependent of the court
•You are currently serving on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces for purposes other than training
•You’re a Veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces.
•You were a foster child after the age of 13.
•You are an emancipated child as determined by a court judge.
•You are homeless or at risk of homelessness as determined by the director of a HUD approved homeless shelter, transitional program, or high school liaison.

[Angela512]

You don't become "financially independent" according to FAFSA until the age of 24...I find that laughable for someone who is living on their own, and legally independent of my parents at 18...most definitely 21. But, I had to include their earnings on any FAFSA paperwork until I was 24. I moved out on my own when I was 20, paid all of my bills with my own job, had my own car, etc. for 4 years before applying and I still had to include both my parent's income (I actually had to apply when I was 25--due to my birthday and the FAFSA deadline and my parental income would not be required).

That is when I went back to college. When I was 25. Looking back, it was the best thing I ever did.