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Seperated Parents and Joint-Accounts

Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2016 6:58 am
by mornincounselor
Two separate questions that arose as I filled out the Financial Aid Application for schools I have been accepted to.

(1) The application asks for "income earned from parent one" and "income earned from parent two" then it asks for "Parents' Asset Information" where it asks for items such as "cash, savings, and bank accounts" and "stocks, bonds and other investments".

If one's parents are separated and the applicant lives with one parent, do they still report this information for both parents? Since there is only one line available, do we add up the number from both parents? Example: Parent 1 has $100 in savings, Parent 2 has $300 in savings. Do we record $400 for the cash savings line?

(2) If a parent has shared access to a bank account with another family member how do we report this asset? Ex: Parent 2 has $100 in their own bank account and $1000 in a bank account they share with their brother. Do we report their cash savings as $600 (half of the joint account + personal) or $1100 (all of the joint account +personal) or some other number?

Thanks.

Re: Seperated Parents and Joint-Accounts

Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2016 8:36 am
by Clearly
for question one it is unfortunately both parents regardless of who you live with to my knowledge. Question 2 is actually an interesting one and I look forward to seeing if anyone else has a good answer for it.