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The marital status and living arrangements of a student’s biological and adoptive parents determines whether the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) requires financial and demographic information from one or both parents.
For federal student aid purposes, a student’s parents are not limited to just biological parents. An adoptive parent is treated in the same manner as a biological parent on the FAFSA. For example, if the student’s grandparent legally adopts the student, the grandparent will be required to complete the FAFSA.
Legal guardians, foster parents, grandparents or other relatives – such as aunts, uncles, or older siblings – are not considered to be parents for purposes of filing a FAFSA even if the student is living with them. The only exception is when this person has legally adopted the student. For example, if a grandparent is a legal guardian for the student and has not adopted the student, the grandparent cannot substitute for the parents on the FAFSA, not even if the student is living with the grandparent. (If the grandparents have not adopted the student, any support provided by the grandparents must be reported as untaxed income to the student on the FAFSA, regardless of the student’s dependency status. Foster care payments are not reported as income on the FAFSA.)
If the student’s biological or adoptive parents are both living and married to each other, select “Married or Remarried” on the FAFSA and provide information about both of them, regardless of their gender. Consistent with the Section 3 of the 2013 Supreme Court decision on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), same-sex couples must report their marital status as married if they were legally married in a state or country that permits same-sex marriage, even if they currently live in a state that does not recognize same-sex marriage.
Starting with the 2014-2015 award year, parents who are divorced or separated but living together are treated the same as married parents, with financial information required from both parents.
If the student’s legal parents (e.g., biological and/or adoptive parents) are not married to each other and live together, select “Unmarried and both parents living together” on the FAFSA and provide information about both of them, regardless of their gender. This includes a student whose parents were never married but live together, as well as a student whose parents are divorced or separated but living together.
Both legal separations and informal separations count as separations on the FAFSA. Parents who have a legal separation agreement can live together. For FAFSA purposes, parents who have an informal separation cannot live together and should maintain separate residences. Different floors of the same house do not count as maintaining separate residences. Living in a hotel room on a temporary basis does not count either. If the student’s parents have an informal separation and are now living together, they are no longer considered as having a separation and should select “Married or Remarried” on the FAFSA instead.
If the student’s legal parents are divorced or separated but not living together, only one parent is responsible for completing the FAFSA, even if the parents file a joint federal income tax return. This parent is often called the custodial parent, but it is not necessarily the parent who has legal custody of the student or who claims the student as a tax exemption.
Do not base the parent’s marital status on any person who is not the student’s legal parent and who is not married to the student’s parent.
The custodial parent is the parent with whom the student lived the most during the 12 months preceding the date the FAFSA is filed. If necessary, count the number of days (nights) the student spent with each parent.
Sometimes, this criterion will not be sufficient to specify which parent must complete the FAFSA. For example, the parents might have joint custody and there might be an even number of days due to a leap year, or the divorce might have occurred less than a year 