[aceupthepants]

I was actually in this same situation last year. My father died when I was two and I lost contact with my mother around 2 years ago. Obviously I couldn’t file for FAFSA because my mother was not around so I had to withdraw from school as I couldn’t possibly afford it on my own. I hired a lawyer and went to court in an effort to be declared an emancipated minor. I found this to be odd because I thought you were declared this when you became 18 but apparently not for cases such as this. There really was no precedent on such a thing so I basically just had to tell the judge my story and she declared me independent. Because of this I was able to get federal aid for schooling but I still was unable to receive state aid because they basically don’t “accept” the ruling.