[Oasfaa] Married?? or not??

[Jonna Raney]

We have an issue that rears it's ugly head every now and then and I'd like to know how others handle it. 

Student's mom reported single with zero income. For these situations, we ask for a Resource and Expense form to show the families expenses and how they were paid. The mom was very forthcoming with information about the fact that she has lived with her boyfriend for 9 years and he pays the expenses. (She had called the FAFSA help line and was told not to include any of his income so she didn't.) At first glance, we thought we'd just add his income as untaxed income to mom, but not include him in the family, and proceed. However, when we started digging a little deeper, we found some interesting things. According to the Verif Guide, it states in summary, that money received for housing, food, clothing, etc should be reported as untaxed income for the student. However, under "In-kind support", it says that if someone is allowing the student to live with them rent-free, that support is not included as untaxed income. We can't find documentation to back-up simply adding it to Mom's untaxed income as we had originally thought. 

So, since they have filed taxes together we checked into Common Law marriage to see if they should be treated as married. According to the Verification Guide, "Common-law marriage - If a couple lives together and has not been formally married but meets the criteria in their state for a common-law marriage, they should be reported as married on the application. If the state doesn't consider their situation to be a common-law marriage, then they aren't married; a dependent student would follow the rules for divorce to determine which parent's information to report. Check w/ the appropriate state agency concerning the definition of a common-law marriage." So, since the student is from Oklahoma, we checked to see if OK would recognize them as married. (This is where it gets interesting) According to the common law marriage website, it states that, "Oklahoma: To establish a common-law marriage, a man and worman must (1) be competent; (2) agree to enter into a marriage relationship; and (3) cohabit. However, under the heading "States that recognize common law marriage," it states "Oklahoma (possibly only if created before 11/1/98. Oklahoma's laws and court decisions may be in conflict about whether common law marriages formed in taht state after 11/1/98 will be recognized." A search on the state of OK site had no results for "common law." Clear as mud, right? 

After all that, we are as confused as when we started. What would you do in this situation? If you don't answer me, I will hound you at the conference on Wednesday, so please make it easy on all of us and let me know. :-) 

Hope to see everyone at OASFAA! Thanks in advance for your help. 

Jonna 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.onenet.net/pipermail/oasfaa/attachments/20120409/4ea00d4e/attachment.html