My girlfriend has suggested we get married before the end of the year. She wants to go to school full time next year. I work full time and she had planned on applying for student aid if she remained single.
Has anyone been in this situation? How much student aid did you lose by getting married?
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she may get less aid, but f*ck it, you’ll just have sex every day, and it’ll be awesome.
Student aid is based on income so it would be hard to tell without filing. You could talk with someone from the financial aid office they should have some type of chart that would tell the income to aid ratio.
It depends on your income.
Yes, it depends on income, but you failed to mention the age of your girlfriend. If she is under the age of 24 she is still considered ‘dependent’ for education purposes as far as federal regulations go. Thus, she would have to use her parents income. If she is over the age of 24 and single, it’s income dependent on what she’ll be awarded. If getting married boosts your income she’ll be awarded lower financial aid.
Getting married just to get a break on financial aid is a poor reason to get married. On the upside, if you were planning on marrying anyway, it’s a great tax break, health insurance break, etc.
Good luck to you both.
When she applies for financial aid, who’s income she lists isn’t based on her marital status of the previous tax year. It’s based on her marital status the date she fills out the fafsa.
So it really wouldn’t matter if you got married on Dec 30 or Jan 1. If she filled her fafsa out on January 2nd she would include both her income and yours. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t file your taxes together last year because you weren’t married.
If she filled out her fafsa on Dec 29th and you got married on the 30th. Her fafsa would have only her income and parents if required because she wasn’t married on the day she did the fafsa. Also, there is no “going back and changing” marital status on the fafsa. So she can’t try to change it to married on January 15. She would be considered the same status as she filed on Dec 29th for that whole academic year.
I hope that was clear
Good luck. Dude, you realize your girlfriend asked you to marry her right? Congrats.