How does financial aid work if you get married and are still a dependent?

I'm almost a Sophomore in college and my long term boyfriend and I are considering getting married, but we are both still considered dependents (we are both under 24; not vets; no children, etc.). Would that decrease or increase our financial aid?|||Getting married is one of the criteria to become independent. Once you get married you will no longer be dependent.|||Firstly, if you were to be married, it would cause both of you to become independent students, meaning that you would both have to provide eachother's financial information on both FAFSAs, but would no longer be required to provide parental information. Now, I do need to mention, when it says "As of today" for the question regarding martial status, that is as of the day you applied for the FAFSA.|||Once you get married you all will no longer be considered dependents. It mostly depends on how much you all will make and if your going to stay in college you will have to have some sort of income to help supplement everything unless both of your parents are still going to pay for it all. For example if your living in the dorms many colleges don't have dorms/apartments for married couples meaning you'll have to get a place off campus which generally will cost more (you may be looking at it as my dorm is $600 a month now but an apartment off campus will be $600 plus at least electric and it will not generally include cable or internet like dorms offer somewhere in the building).





So your best bet is to not look at it as what will our financial aid be but look at it as how much do I currently rely on my parents. If they do a lot for you all than wait until you graduate. If they do practically nothing for you (meaning they don't pay any of your college dorm/food costs, don't give you spending money, don't pay for your car, cellphone etc....) than do the FAFSA4CASTER to see how much aid you and your bf could receive once married.|||Once you're married you will no longer be considered "dependants" of your parents, but realistically it's not going to drastically affect your financial aid status much either way unless one or the other of your parents were rich and thus you were receiving little to no financial aid.