Wealthy parents in Illinois are giving up legal guardianship of their children in order to "scam" universities into qualifying them for need-based financial aid, ProPublica Illinois reports.
In a report released Tuesday,
ProPublica said it found dozens of parents, many of whom are doctors and lawyers, exploiting a legal loophole to save money at the expense of low-income students.
Executing the plot is rather simple once a family gets an attorney’s help. In the last years of high school, parents give up guardianship of their children to family members or friends. This allows the students to declare financial independence, so when they apply for college, their financial needs are judged without consideration of the parents' income. Most of the guardianship cases were executed by two law firms in the Chicago suburbs, the report found.