Who counts as a contributor on the FAFSA

Anyone who has to give information or sign on your FAFSA is called a contributor. Working out who that is comes first, before any numbers.

Dependent or independent

The form asks a short series of questions about your age, marriage, children, military service and a few other situations. Your answers decide whether you report a parent’s information. Graduate and professional students report their own.

Living on your own or paying your own bills does not by itself make you independent for aid purposes. If your situation is unusual, such as being unable to contact your parents, the aid office can review it.

What to do

• Answer the dependency questions before anything else
• Use the parent who gave more financial support
• Each contributor signs in with their own account
• Every contributor must give consent for tax data

Which parent

If your parents are divorced or separated, the parent who gave you more financial support over the past twelve months is the one who reports. If that parent has remarried, a stepparent reports too.

If you are married and independent, your spouse may be a contributor.

A form waiting on one person’s consent is not finished, so ask early.

What each contributor does

Each contributor creates their own StudentAid.gov account, answers their part of the form and consents to the IRS sharing their tax information. Without that consent the form cannot be finished, even if every other answer is in.