Fafsa and Marriage

I am in a similar boat- full time student at a private school that gets a lot of financial aid and what not. I was originally going to be graduating in December of this year but stuff happens so now I will be graduating may 2020. My solution to the financial aid debacle was to already file, it goes based off the date you file it so I am not married yet and it is already filed and all ready to go based of my single data. When is your wedding?

Marriage usually negativity impacts things like fafsa/grants. I finished school thanks to my grants before we were engaged but with our incomes together I don’t think I would have qualified for much if any if we were married. It seems especially hard once you’re going towards anything beyond an associates.

View Quoted Comment Originally we were going to be married this coming weekend. We live in Colorado so all we have to do is get the marriage license. We can literally sign it and turn it back in right then and there and we will be considered married, so we hadn't planned on much. I filed for my 2019/2020 fafsa last October and wont be filing for 2020/2021 until next October so I feel like we have a window of time to figure some things out. We have to get married sooner than later I just dont want to have to quit school because both of our credit is not well and therefore private school loans are not an option.

You are fine unless you file your taxes married filed jointly. Then his income is considered your income as well. Also know that even though you fill out your financial aid and it comes back lower than you anticipated, talk to your school’s financial aid department as they have tricks to make you eligible.

Worried about the same. Following!

Yeah once you get married his income will count against you. I'm in my 2nd year of my bsn and will be having the same problem

View Quoted Comment Even if you file married, filing separately you still need to include your spouse’s income on the FAFSA forms and any other financial aid forms. The only way they’ll not count your spouse’s income is if you can prove you are actually legally/physically separated. My ex-husband and I filed separately when we were married but I still had to include his income while applying for financial aid.

View Quoted Comment

Yes, but you also have forms to go against this that can be filled out. I was married before and in school and did this. I would renegotiate my eligibility all the time with the actual financial aid office.

View Quoted Comment But your initial reply said “you’re fine unless you file your taxes jointly” and that’s not accurate. Not all financial aid offices will renegotiate with you- mine didn’t.

View Quoted Comment

Maybe I just got lucky then. It worked for me at two schools as well as my husband at the time. I also did a work study too in the financial aid office at one of my schools and saw that schools have more power than you think. Most people in the office though are just grumpy.

I would wait to get married until after you graduate so you don't lose your financial aid with a dual income you most likely will. I'm friends with a couple that put off their wedding for this exact reason

If we could wait we would. My health is an issue. We have to move forward as fast as we can. In the long run the financial aide could be a mute point. We are weighing the options. Really a hard situation.

Yes, his income will come into play when you are married and could effect the amount of Financial Aid you receive. This is based on the federal government, not the specific school (as someone who formerly worked in financial aid and received many angry students). The FAFSA will ask you to the effect of "on the day you are completing your FAFSA, what is your marital status" if you are not yet married, you would choose single. Even if you will be married during that next year. Here's this link from the FAFSA website that can help https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/help/update-fafsa-info

A lot of students were upset because as you know FAFSA changed and started using 2 years prior tax returns. And obviously you wouldn't have been married to your spouse at that time. But once you get married, the federal government will view you as a household/ unit and require your spouses tax information as well.

Exact reason why I'm waiting until next year to get married sadly... it's a shame how expensive universities are. Since your health is the issue and you can't wait, I can only think of one idea. If you go to the financial aid office and plead your case, they may be able to scrape together a grant/scholarship of some sort for you. I've done it before and I attend a private university. You certainly have to swallow your pride a bit though. It wasn't much, but it all helps!

I thank all of you for the help and advice. It is greatly appreciated.

I recommend using the FAFSA tool as discussed above. FAFSA will take into account both incomes as discussed. However, how much the new income actually impacts your aid depends more on the cost of your school, the new combined income, any other assets you two have, and the type of aid you're already receiving, than just the income. When I was in undergrad, I filed FAFSA based on my mother's income (I was a dependent at the time), and even though she earned six figures, I maxed on federal aid b/c of the cost of my school (small liberal arts college). But I didn't qualify for the income based grants. Similarly in law school, my husband's income would not have affected my qualification b/c of the cost of attendance. If you're receiving loans, you should honestly still qualify for those loans. BUT as others have mentioned, talk to your financial aid office and use the resources of the FAFSA website.

So I spent a lot of time digging into this. Depending what time of year you renew your information and when you get married, it might give you another year to get away with being single for repayment reasons.

Navient takes anyone in your household living with you (whether you are husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc) into account when deciding how much you pay per mth. So when we got married, we knew how much our bill was going to be. *Fingers crossed they don't change it on us.

MyFedLoan.org goes off of your taxes. So if you file jointly it will affect your repayment plans, if you don't if your married but file single, it won't affect your repayment plans.

So we decided that we would be married but file our taxes separately until our student loans are paid off. Which will probably take until the day we die, but hey, it's a method.

Even though we want to file jointly it's just not worth it when it comes to our student loans. It would be great if they would go POOF!

Good luck, and if you have any other questions I'd talk with your providers. They'll tell you straight up what their policy is, but talk to a manager and get their name etc for reference in case you need it later when someone is telling you the wrong information.