IIRC there are two exceptions to FAFSA being considered dependent if you're under 24

One is if you are an emancipated adult. The other being if you're married.

The emancipated one has been added too. I ran into issues in the 2000s being emancipated but with FAFSA still looking at my parent's incomes.

I believe military service also qualifies a student as being financially independent.

You are so right about that. Hooah! Sidenote: If you have gone to boot camp, then the college can waive all the fitness class requirements. First time go!

Do colleges usually have fitness class requirements? I’ve never seen that in any GenEd section of a degree program?

Columbia does if you're in the College (aka 90% of students)

My california community college did, and I believe it's a requirement for UC and CSU as well. I don't think the private engineering school I transfered to did; because I don't recall anyone complaining about it.

But at least at community college there were many options. Table tennis once a week for one semester wasn't a huge burden.

Yes, military service emancipates you for FAFSA purposes.

There are a few others as well. As of the 2023-2024 cycle, there are 13 ways to be considered independent (any one of them suffices), according to the official list [1]. To summarize them here:

1. Born before Jan 1, 2000; 2. Married; 3. Will be attending grad school [2]; 4. Active-duty U.S. military; 5. U.S. military veteran; 6. Have dependent children; 7. Have live-in dependents other than children; 8. Both parents deceased and/or were a foster child or a ward of the court after age 13; 9. Current or former emancipated minor; 10. Legal guardian is someone other than parent or stepparent; 11,12,13. Homeless or at-risk-of-homelessness within the past year (three different routes of determination).

[1] https://studentaid.gov/2324/help/need-parent-info

[2] Graduate students in the U.S. generally don't get the kind of need-based financial aid that undergrads do, though, so this one is often not very helpful.

emancipated route is how millionaire's kids get in and get financial aid

In my early twenties, after dropping out of faculty but before I started working, I was often literally hungry while my parents were not really millionaires, more like quite well-off. I guess they thought keeping fridge constantly empty will make me go out and look for work (I did not until 26, just traveled, couchsurfed and partied around). Ironically, I often ate at my best friend's whose parents were on the edge of poverty, but supported him (and me) with all of little they had.

I wouldn’t share that with people. It just makes you sound like you were a privileged entitled bum that took advantage of your less privileged friends hospitality.

Because that’s essentially what you were. Hopefully no longer.

Perhaps. I see it differnetly. I am privileged now with my nice job, back in the day I was just a kid who was trying to become independent adult without proper guidance and support from parents. What I wanted to say is that young adults, regardless of their parent's social and financial status, need guidance and support in order to become independent and productive members of society. I got an impression that some people think that kids whose parents are well-off or rich always get it from their parents, so they are not entitled to get it from other sources (like scholarship, discounted housing, public transit, food, cultural institutions tickets for students etc.). That is not the case.

I hope you give back or at least have done something nice for those folks who fed you so much

The fact that you felt the freedom to part and fuck off until 26 speaks to a degree of privilege and freedom that your safety net of parental wealth provided you that you don’t even seem aware of.

It’s also how middle-class kids whose parents don’t support them in any way get financial aid.

I understand why the system is the way that it is — it covers probably 95% of cases correctly — but for those of us who were essentially on our own after 18, it’s terribly unjust.

I married my best friend of several years so she could get financial aid. Her financial aid counselor told her about the lengthy emancipation legal process or marriage. She came over one night with a "I have a huge favor to ask of you" and about a week later we were married.

did you stay married?

Technically, yes for about seven years. We were introduced by a mutual friend because we were both staying on campus over the Christmas holiday. We hooked up on Christmas Eve and dropped some acid and had a fun few days. We were both the oddly precocious types who graduated high school at 16/17. We were both sorta slutty. We just became best of friends for the next few years (we both went our own separate ways romantically, we would eventually even go out and hook up with each others roommates...) We went out and got tattoos together on her 18th birthday. It was a couple of years later that we got married (I like to pontificate that we got married by the justice of the peace in the Blade Runner building. It was justice of the peace and somewhere in an old downtown LA building, no frills). She had her mothers or grandmothers ring or such, mine was a Peace symbol ring from a gumball machine with the Peace symbol torn off.... It turned my finger green unless coated with clear nail polish. About six months later I left university and moved halfway across the country. It was always interesting to eventually tell girlfriends and such that "by the way, technically I'm married". Around seven years later I ran into another mutual friend who told me that she had been looking for me to sign papers and such and couldn't find me. We did meet up again a few years later and nothing came up, she finally settled down and got really married. I assume she got a rubber stamp divorce for abandonment or even non-consummation (almost, but we were both so "too drunk to fuck" on Extacy that we gave up and just went back to the party). She's still a fond memory of a bestest friend for years, we could like read each other's minds, almost too dangerous to be serious.

I would watch this movie! Would probably be better than “the Pursuit of happiness”

I’m surprised it’s not counted as fraud

It beat the fraud of getting married for the sole purpose of getting into someone's pants!

The right way to think of marriage for government purposes is a contract. If someone has entered in this contract, they get certain benefits. If the benefits are properly designed, they are valid only for the duration of the contract. As long as both people were abiding by the terms of the contract, it’s not fraud.

My spouse and I got married "early" in the court system for a similar reason, in order to qualify for in-state tuition. However, we then had a proper wedding in front of our family and community a few months later, so I'm not sure it would really matter to the policy makers. Definitely helped drive home for us, though: there are three different marriages in a marriage:

There is a legal contract, that is important to people you have never met and will never meet, and, if things are going right, is never at all relevant to your actual marriage in any way except for how it lets you navigate government policy.

There is a social contract, that is important to everyone who acknowledges you as a couple (and also people who have never business seeing you this way).

And there is your actual relationship, which may be enhanced or degraded by the previous two elements, but is somewhat oblique to both.