Questions about CSS Profile, if noncustodial parent is a full time student with no income
(This is background; jump to the TL;DR below for the question)
I have full custody of my daughter. I pay alimony to my ex. He's a full time student, and as far as I know has no income, and has a ton of student loans, and he expects to never be out of debt. He owns a car, no real assets. I don't know what he did with the 401k money from the divorce. Perhaps he rolled it over into another retirement account, or perhaps he took it as cash to live on (It was only $50k). He may have credit card debt, I don't know.
He is very hostile towards me, and is adamantly refusing to fill out the CSS forms. I'm trying to find a way to convince him to do so.
My daughter has already sent him an email begging him, for her sake, and he refuses. He seems to think that providing financial information can be used against him in some way. He's upset that I've initiated the 3-year child support review process, and that may be feeding into this (if I thought it would make a difference I would drop the review, but from past experience, I know he'll find something else to be upset about).
I completely believe that he has no assets, and no ability to provide support for her college expenses. The college allows us to send letters to explain our situation, and I plan to do that.
However, I'm thinking of trying to send him an email to convince him to fill out the forms. If she doesn't get into this college under Early Decision, then we'll have to jump through so many hoops with the other college applications. And this may end up making her go to a college that is a lesser fit for her and her goals.
TL;DR
If the parent is a full time student with no income and no assets, other than alimony, realistically, what will be the likely result of the CSS Profile?
Even if they say, oh you can afford $x, it's not like they will force him to pay, right?
Isn't it realistically the case that they will see he has nothing, and that will be the end of it? Do colleges say, well you should have a job, so we're going to assume you can earn $Y, so we'll make you pay $Z?
Posted Oct 31, 2017, 9:01 PM UTC
There’s a lot to unpack here, so here we go:
The CSS Profile looks at actual income, not imagined income. If your ex doesn’t have a job, they aren’t going to pretend that he does have a job and make up an imaginary income that he should be earning from the job that he doesn’t have. Your combined income is what it is on the day that you fill out the Profile, and there’s no predictive analytics used.
That being said, the CSS Profile is used to feed a formula that calculates your family’s need. However, this is only a formula that the college uses to estimate what they think you can pay; there is no guarantee that what they think you can pay and what you think you can pay will be the same. Their formula is mostly one size fits all, for better or for worse, so they tend to treat families with the same income more or less the same. Not only that, there is no commitment by the school that they’ll provide your daughter with enough aid even according to their formula. The formula calculates how much aid that the school thinks you will need, but it isn’t automatically a promise that they’ll give you at least that much aid.
There are only a relatively small number of colleges in the US that promise to meet full need for all admitted students. There are many more that will give some financial aid to most students, but that isn’t necessarily enough to meet your need. For your safety, if you think your family will need a lot of financial aid you should recommend that your daughter apply to at least some schools that do promise to meet full financial need.
If your daughter already has some schools in mind, another thing that you can do is google the school’s name and “net price calculator” to get the best estimate of what kind of aid each school may provide.
Thank you, this is very helpful!
She is applying Early Decision to one school which requires the CSS, which is how this issue arose just now (and the CSS deadline is Nov 15). I didn't even realize that my ex would have to be involved in the college process, so this has really thrown us for a loop.
It turns out every college on her list requires the CSS, except for the local "backup" school (which is still a good program, just not ideal for her. It won't be a tragedy if she ends up having to go there). She's started sending out emails to their financial aid offices asking for advice, and so far has gotten three replies basically saying they will want additional information about our situation. I imagine this is not a rare situation for a student to be in.
So, we have a plan, and it's a bit more complicated, but I think there's a way forward. I will still send an email to my ex, trying to convince him to cooperate because it would just be easier all around if he would. And your answer #1 above really helps ease my mind, and will give me something to tell him.
However, I don't expect much to come from it. At least I'll be able to tell the colleges that she and I both tried to convince him.
Thank you so much for your reply, and yes we will likely need to take out loans. It would be nice to not have to take out as many loans, though.