A bunch of Illinois parents a have been discovered to be giving up custody of their kids to get need-based aid at University of Illinois and other state schools.
This is how it works…..
Wealthy folks are separating financially from their kids by using lawyers and the courts to create a change in guardianship, where the kids are technically listed under the guardianship of a retired or unemployed relative who has a much lower or non existent income. The students still live with Mom and Dad all through high school, still going to affluent private schools and taking all the expensive ACT/SAT prep classes in between lacrosse practices. Then when it comes time to apply to private colleges or state universities, they register themselves as indigent low income people who must be given PELL grants and other financial aid. The monetarily successful parents and their income is no longer required to be on the forms.
From Chicago Sun Times:
Parents are giving up legal custody of their children during their junior or senior year in high school to someone else — a friend, aunt, cousin or grandparent. The guardianship status then allows the students to declare themselves financially independent of their families so they can qualify for federal, state and university aid, a ProPublica Illinois investigation found.
“It’s a scam,” said Andy Borst, director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Wealthy families are manipulating the financial aid process to be eligible for financial aid they would not be otherwise eligible for. They are taking away opportunities from families that really need it.”
While ProPublica Illinois uncovered this practice in north suburban Lake County, where almost four dozen such guardianships were filed in the past 18 months, similar petitions have been filed in at least five other counties and the practice may be happening throughout the country.
ProPublica Illinois found more than 40 guardianship cases fitting this profile filed between January 2018 and June 2019 in the Chicago suburbs of Lake County alone. The parents involved in these cases include lawyers, a doctor and an assistant schools superintendent, as well as insurance and real estate agents. A number of the children are high-achieving scholars, athletes and musicians who attend or have been accepted to a range of universities, from large public institutions, including the University of Wisconsin, the University of Missouri and Indiana University, to smaller private colleges. Officials at those universities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
So it’s immoral, unethical, and just plain wrong. But is it illegal?
From The Huffington Post:
The practice is legal, but the Journal notes that the Education Department is looking into the matter. The agency did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. ProPublica noted that laws in Illinois governing the transfer of legal guardianship are broadly written and that as long as the parents, children and the court agree, a judge can approve the transfer even if parents are able to financially support their kids.
So that’s a no. Prosecutions have not begun. Some schools are investigating and may try to stop their required payments to students are aren’t truly needed, but they can’t do that easily, or without A LOT of paperwork.
Thanks Illinois, keeping it classy yet again.
7/30/19
