Illinois Parents Reportedly Gave Up Custody Of Their Kids To Help Get College Scholarships

[47of74]

Can’t do it honestly so they gotta cheat

Quote

Dozens of wealthy families in Illinois have reportedly been using a controversial tactic to help their children pay for college: They give up legal guardianship so the teenagers can claim dramatically lower incomes and earn need-based financial aid, according to reports from two news organizations published Monday.

ProPublica and The Wall Street Journal each detailed the efforts in separate articles after uncovering dozens of applications filed by Chicago-area parents to financially divorce themselves from their kids over the past year and a half.

As part of the strategy, wealthy parents allegedly file paperwork to transfer legal custody of their kids to other relatives, friends or even co-workers. When the transfers are complete — often during their junior or senior years of high school — students are then able to declare themselves financially independent on college applications. In one instance detailed by the Journal, a student whose parents owned a $1.2 million home only had to declare $4,200 in income from a summer job.

 Time to go shove a goddamn twenty in the fucking swear jar. This pisses me off because you fucking well know this took away from some kid that needed the help. 

[JustEnough]

How is this a thing? Is it even legal? Just... WTF????

[Ozlsn]

Are scholarships based on income or total assets? I had friends who declared independence from their families in order to receive Austudy (money from the government to help with study/living costs) because their parents were, on paper, far too wealthy. Unfortunately though while the family farm may have been worth quite a lot their family incomes were only just above the poverty line (drought years). It was changed in later years to try and better reflect income (and to stop Alan Bond's daughter claiming it).

I sincerely wish they could come up with a better way of supporting people who want to study. Paying after the degree through tax would be one option, but then you have people with good accountants who are - on paper - never going to earn more than their pool cleaner.

[DarkAnts]

In the US your federal student aid package is based on your parents income until you are 25 unless you are married. I hope these chargers are filed against these parents. Many students and parents struggle to pay for college. These parents can afford to do it. They simply don't want to.

[zee_four]

When I was an in state student at University of Colorado Boulder I was part of a small multicultural sorority and was the philanthropy chair. I was contacted by an organization that offered to get instate tuition for sorority sisters and wanted to be involved in some shady way for a philanthropy event. Colorado atrociously funds (or doesn't fund) K-12 or higher education. We're 48th out of 50 in the country for both. Meanwhile CU Boulder and all Colorado schools are HUGE magnets for very wealthy kids from California, Texas, New York, Chicago, etc. to party, ski, etc.

In 2010 when I was there out of state tuition was like 35K a year but the price was locked in, whatever price you started at it wouldn't go up even if out of state tuition did. Meanwhile in state tuition was going up like 10% annually. In state students were and are by far from much lower socioeconomic groups on average, trying to get the best education for the best price by staying in state .

CO universities desperately need the high out of state tuition to help fund the schools. And those who were able to pay were the ones who could afford to pay to get in state tuition in this shady manner. It was so disgusting, I yelled at them and told them to never contact me again.

[Dreadcrumbs]

42 minutes ago, DarkAnts said:

In the US your federal student aid package is based on your parents income until you are 25 unless you are married. I hope these chargers are filed against these parents. Many students and parents struggle to pay for college. These parents can afford to do it. They simply don't want to.

*24

But yeah, this is what it looks like. Rich people want to look poor when it suits them.

[Whipple]

In California they closed a loophole wherein teens were getting legal emancipation from their wealthy parents. 

Also, call me ignorant but I thought it was difficult for the legal parent to relinquish custody of a nearly-grown child. I remember a case where Mormon adoptive parents tried to unadopt their son and the court said no way. Just goes to show money talks.