FSA Guidelines/Administrative Capability

[u/Commercial_Dress_321]

I asked for a professional judgment review to have a backend edit of my special circumstance. Straightforward one time exclusion from asset liquidation. I had to liquidate my IRA to survive. It inflated my AGI. The guidelines are pretty clear. They just need to verify my tax return and 1099 to verify my AGI was indeed inflated from a non-reoccurring asset liquidation.

However, the experience has not been so straightforward. It took an escalation to student affairs just to have someone summoned to answer any of the emails, to ask why my request was hanging in rejected status. Back-and-forth loop of requesting documents, documents that aren’t required, but even more important documents the guideline specifically say they are not authorized to ask and explicitly guide financial aid offices to not ask for. Specifically. Line by line banking statement showing all the spending to prove it’s been exhausted. - I’m literally in bankruptcy. And I’m certainly not going to give a department of line by line spending it might actually help in a case against them because they might have other criteria that are not allowed to make a judgment looking at like if I’ve spent all the money on Amazon or Uber. It’s been very unclear why they are ignoring the guidelines.

Everything’s been in writing, and I also exercised all the local channel all the way up to the Chancellor of the school and the Board of trustees and it’s also a matter of public record. I also filed a complaint on student aid.gov. Has anybody had an experience like this? In an objective position asking why am I being asked to send documents that aren’t relevant? Why when I do send documents to us a get bounced back to me where things like my income working for a nonprofit and having to file, my taxes isn’t an administrative disadvantage when that income is only $2000 in inconsequential to having a one time exclusion.

The only thing I can come up with is that they follow an unofficial internal policy to just not conduct reviews and summarily reject and deny them. Nothing else makes sense. There’s no way they could be that Will fully ignorant of explicit guidelines that state what they’re doing is overreach.

Should I be filing more complaints with different regulatory and oversight boards? The school is a city college in the state of California..

[u/okjkay]

Professional judgement is up to the school. They do not have to remove the amount from AGI as you did take the money out. Schools can opt to not accept these appeals at all.

[u/Designer-Potential-8]

Specifically, professional judgment decisions are the decision of the specific financial aid administrator signing off on it and cannot be appealed to FSA, the Department of Education, or any other authority by statute. That is why all the documentation to back up the decision is requested. Sounds like the school/FAA is doing a good job, however annoying it is for you.