A Parent’s Guide to the FAFSA: Dependency Status

and now we get moved into dependency status so again this section is referencing referencing the student marital status can’t tell you how many times i’ve seen a parent jump in and be like oh i’m married to my partner therefore i’m going to go ahead and enter married nope this is the student’s marrow status so unless your child is married today as a high school senior you’re going to go ahead and select single for the majority in the vast majority of cases because again the student’s marital status right there’s going to be a separate question for

your marital status in the parent demographic section the next question again goes to dependence and once again this is about the students so does your child have children who will be supported by not you but by your child between july 1st 2022 and june 30th 2023 i.e during the school year in your case when you’re filling out this out it’s going to be july 1st 2023 to june 30th 2024. for the vast majority of you again it’s going to be no and no in terms of other dependents go ahead and click continue now there are

some additional questions that students have to enter answer if your student is currently serving on active duty in the u.s armed forces or if they’re a veteran of the armed forces if both parents were deceased though i think the

majority folks in the audience are parents if the student was ever in foster care or if they were ever a dependent or ward of the court if they were ever an emancipated minor and if you are a guardian this is probably the most common for folks at least in this audience in terms of someone besides a

parent or step parent being the legal guardian so you can click that and it’s going to change the questions you get asked for on the whole the vast majority you’re just going to hit none of the above because again these are pretty rare situations for at least the parents in the audience okay next question is about homelessness as to whether the student was homeless in the recent past the answer yes can answer me no just answer that question accordingly and then the next question is about entering information about parents if you’re a parent almost by

definition you’re gonna be saying i will provide information about my parents but if you if you’re a student in the audience and you don’t have information about your parents be able to enter it you can click i’m unable to provide information about parents so that is the dependency status section