Independant Application - Friend's Very Uncommon Circumstances

Hi everyone,

I'm posting on behalf of my best friend who is currently applying for student finance (as am I).

While my application has been fairly straightforward as I live with both my parents who are married, my friend's situation is much more complicated.

He was born to unmarried parents, and when he was three his dad left their family, and has since married another woman and had two younger children. While my friend's older brother occasionally visits their dad, my friend himself has never been close with him, never lived with him, and has never been supported by him financially at all.

When my friend was 13, his mum passed away from a brain tumour, at which point his older brother moved away to live with their dad for two years, while my friend moved in with his aunty (mother's sister), who became his legal guardian.

However he and his aunty were not close at all (she and her husband were not very nice to him, and even stole some of my friend's life insurance money that he received monthly after his mum's death as it was put into their account rather than his while he was still younger.)

When he was 16-17 he decided to move in with his other aunty and nan who lived together as he got along much better with them. His nan was very frail and was looked after by a care worker once a day, and his aunty is disabled and has never worked, and so my friend took it upon himself to carry out a lot of the household work to help his family. During this time he turned 18, and so was able to take responsibility of himself independently from his first aunty who was his guardian. A year or so ago his nan passed away, and since then he has been living just with his disabled aunty.

This January (my friend is now 19) the aunty who had been his guardian passed away from a heart attack. As such, he is completely independent of his deceased mum, deceased guardian, and estranged dad. He relies financially on his disabled aunty in a sense because they live together and he doesn't have a job (he is in full time education and spends a lot of time looking after his aunty) although her only income is from benefits and is very little (roughly £7000? Although I'm unsure).

http://www.brightknowledge.org/knowledge-bank/money/student-finance/how-do-i-apply-for-student-finance-if-i-am-independent-of-my-parents

On the website above it states that he can apply as an independent student if he has no living parents or is estranged from his parents, if he provides evidence.

While not many tutors or teachers are aware of his circumstances because he tends to be very quite about it, my mum (who is a childminder, and was a teacher for 5 years) has provided a written and signed letter detailing all of his circumstances as she is aware of them. My friend also attends counselling at our college, so they may be able to provide another letter for evidence if need be.

If he applies as an independent student it is stated that 'your loans and grants will be based on your income and your partner's income, if you have one.' He doesn't have a partner and doesn't have any income of his own, so how will this work out for him? Will he just apply using his own lack of any income? Or would he use his aunty's benefit income even though she is not his legal guardian or parent?

Any information on how student finance will work out for my friend would be really helpful.

If he's accepted as independent (which sounds appropriate - as long as SFE approve his evidence) then he'll be assessed based on his own forecast income while studying. In effect that means he will get the maximum support available.