Hey FAFSA, go fuck yourself.

The BBQ Pit
1

I don’t post on this message board much, but every now and then there is an issue I just have to bitch about.

Ok, a little backstory…

For a while, I wasn’t going to college. I didn’t see the reason to rush into it, and I was the stereotypical undecided kid. I decided to give retail and other shitty jobs a try and see how that worked out for me.

Well, I fucking hate retail. Big surprise!:rolleyes:

So, I thought about it for a long time and finally decided that a degree from my local community college would be a good choice. I opted to go into the medical laboratory tech program. Of course, I need prerequisites and all that jazz. I went and talked to a counselor to see what I needed to do in order to get started. Well, of course I need to pay for all this shit, so I decided to turn to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

Now, I started filling this stuff out, and answered every question correctly, then come to find out that by their standards, I’M CONSIDERED A DEPENDENT OF MY MOTHER.

This pisses me the fuck off for a few reasons:

1: My mother and I do not talk. I’ve been on my own, supporting myself 100% for almost 2 years now (I’m 20)
2: If and when they take her income into account, they will see that she is an R.N. with a Masters Degree and makes about 65,000 to 72,000 a year.
3: They will NOT take into account that a few years back, she filed bankruptcy and in turn is having some large percent of her checks taken out in order to pay off her remaining debt. (I know they don’t take this into account, because I applied while living at home, and she made just enough to allow them to pass me off.)
4: Even if my mom and I WERE on speaking terms, she wouldn’t be able to help me out because she sucks ass at budgeting.

This is all so frustrating for me.:frowning: I just want to go to school to better myself! I’m already living paycheck to paycheck, and if they saw that I only really get 12,000 a year, I’m sure I’d get help!

I fucking hate the FAFSA, I hate that this country expects us to figure this shit out on our own, and I think I just hate money. I would TOTALLY pay more taxes if it meant that people could go to college for free or with easier help from the government.

(Sorry so long, but there ya go)

2

Yeah, a lot of people run into this. It blows, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Take out loans if you have to, you’ll still be way better off as a lab tech than in retail. Retail sucks so bad.

3

Is there any way to fill out a form and/or appeal - essentially to have you swear an oath that you and your mother are not on speaking terms?

Or perhaps there is something she can sign that effectively says “Havik is no son of mine and will not get a nickle from me”?

Since you apparently do not live with your mother, are over the age of 18 and have no legal right to any of your mothers money, I can’t imagine how FAFSA can make the determination that you are a dependent. Does she claim you as a dependent on her tax forms? No?

Give them the facts, and ask what paperwork you need to file to prove that you will not get a penny from your mother.

4

Well, definitely keep your CC’s financial aid office in the loop, now and when you get your award letter. They may be able to finesse things.

You’ll almost certainly need to borrow. The government doesn’t pay people’s tuition in this country and if all it took to get them to do so was to say “I’m estranged from my parents” on a form, well, you and your parents and everyone else and their parents would have heard about it a long time ago.

5

Well, they do have a special circumstance clause that can make your parents information unnecessary, but having read through it, I don’t qualify. You need to basically build a case supporting how and why you don’t talk to your parents using court documents, letters to clergy, whatever. I don’t have any of this shit. Using this evidence, you have to convince the financial aide officer at your school to declare you independent.

I’m also not 23 or older, not married, not in the armed forces, not a veteran, and not working on my doctorate or masters. Total crap, in my opinion.
Oh, and for the record, I’m female.

6

How is it that they declared you a dependent for FA purposes? Does your mother claim you as a dependent on her tax return? Do you live with her? Is it possible you made some mistake or misinterpretation in filling out the form? It’s been a long time since I was in college, but I took some time off between jr and sr year – a year and a half – and by the time I returned to school I’d been on my own long enough to be an independent student for FA.

7

The paperwork to be considered an “independant student” is ridiculously long and complicated, but it is an option. I believe FAFSA considers anyone under the age of 23 a dependant. Don’t ask me why, I just remember that section from when I had to fill out the evil form.

Here it is, the Dependency Status Worksheet (which confirms the 23 thing):

http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/before015.htm

8

I got some government aid when i went to university in Australia. They have similar rules regarding parental income, but there are a couple of exceptions.

The first is age. If you are over a certain age (it was 23 when i did it), you are considered an independent student, and you parents’ income is not taken into account. Not sure if the age is still the same.

The second is estrangement. If you can prove, to the government’s satisfaction, that you parents have not been supporting you, and will not support you, then you might qualify. Note, though, that this requires more than simply filling out an affidavit. You have to demonstrate that you have been working and living off your own income, that you have not lived with your parents for a significant amount of time, and it also helped your cause if you could show some evidence of actual hostility or difference with your parents. I knew a couple of people who qualified in this way, but it took quite a mountain of paperwork and evidence to get.

And, looking at Justin Bailey’s post on prview, it seems that US rules might actually be quite similar to Australia’s.

9

Yeah mhendo, it sounds pretty similar to Australia.

There are other things that can make you qualify as dependent, but it’s basically like,

“Were you homeless as a child? Were you a ward of the state? etc. etc.”
Sorry I managed to keep my shit together and move out at the age of 18 without having the government get involved.:rolleyes:

10

Given the above information, I join with the OP in pitting FAFSA with the fury of 10,000 suns.

11

Have you spoken to your school’s fiancial aid administrator? Not the little flunkey who mans the office. I mean the actual administrator. Hound them. Find out what would satisfy them to prove your mother is not your money maker.

I also think it’s a stupid rule. You’re not alone. I worked for FAFSA for a while and a lot of students have the same problem. Some schools won’t even consider letting a student declare independent, but those that do will probably work with you to figure out a way to get you the aid you need without Mom’s help.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s really antiquated to think that just because someone is under 23, unmarried, and not in the military that for some reason they are not independent.

Of course, if you REALLY want to cause a stink, you can contact your local congress person and beg them to help you out. Make them bug the school. And then suggest to them that they do write some legislation to change that idiotic rule. Unfortunately, it really is congress who decided what the determining factors would be. FAFSA just administers.

12

Go talk to this person. Walk into his or her office and ask for either information on what exactly you need to do or for an appointment to do so. Make friendly personal contact with the financial aid department and ask what you need to do to prove estrangement or that your mother couldn’t help you even if she wanted to.

13

I’d kinda like to see the government garnish the parents’ wages in these situations.

14

Good Lord, on what grounds?

15

Although I agree the regulations are stupid, I don’t see that there should be a legal obligation on a parent’s part to provide college funding for an adult child that they do not speak with and who has been 100% self supporting and on their own for 2 years.

IOW, two stupids do not make a right.

16

Your best bet is to get married. I was 20 owned my own home and was earning over 20K a year and had been declared independent from my parents by my school (in state tuition purposes). I still had to report my parents income to get student loans.

Good luck with fighting them.

17

It’s been like that forever. It sucks and I’ll always side with it’s wrong to do that.

18

There’s an awful lot of hatred directed toward the system here. But no one has actually addressed the consequences. Dependent status isn’t going to make much difference for the OP, and I suspect her reaction is more about her independence from mommy than her ability to pay for college.

Basically, the only thing your parents’ income counts toward is Pell grants, which are free money from the government. Pell grants are always pretty tiny, and they are hard to qualify for. You are, by your own admission, making more money than most Pell grant awardees.

The other thing that your dependency status will affect is the amount of subsidized vs unsubsidized loans. For a CC program, the difference between these is going to be fairly small, basically just the interest accrued for 2 years. You might get a lower award as far as total loans you can take, but unless this is New Haven Community College, you aren’t going to be close to not having your education covered.

Secondly, no matter your dependency status, you can always contest your EFC, which is what people always do if they feel they need more than their awarded loans. The school is highly unlikely to declare you independent, because it’s federal law, and because it actually doesn’t matter much.

The OP (and others) might be taking issue with being labeled as dependent, rather than being unable to afford school because of it. The reality is that the US government doesn’t often pay tuition for you. What they do is give you really cheap loans that are very forgiving on penalties, interest, and payment plans. Getting pissed off about a basically arbitrary and meaningless distinction is pointless overreaction.

19

Not true. Pell Grants can be quite lucrative and having one or both parents out of the picture is a virtual guarantee you’ll get one.

20

No.

Average New Award: $2,945
Range of New Awards: $400–$4,731

http://www.ed.gov/programs/fpg/funding.html

That’s per year. Pell grants on average cover at most 1/3rd of tuition, let alone other expenses, and the awards have been growing more slowly than inflation.

Getting a Pell grant is more difficult as a dependent, true. But you can also get them by getting an adjusted EFC. Still, Pell grants are not essential, nor are they going to pay for a lot.