We inherited some shack in a nearby state and I think it’s worth like $50k or something in some dangerous podunk city that nobody wants to live in or even drive through. We could get rid of it, or abandon it or whatever, but what interests me is that there’s a pretty good flagship state university with an in-state tuition that’s $20k lower than that of the flagship state university in my state.
So…I’m wondering…is there a way to like, make this work? Or would my kids actually need to be in the shack with some amount of permanence? The property tax on said shack is like $500 a year.
I don’t really know, but I would hope that you could work this out.
Try googling the Shack-State-U’s “in state” definition. It’s probably on their website. It will explain what the residency requirements are. I did this once for MN. It was all laid out. Maybe you need something like 1 year’s residency in the shack, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Smoothie Jr has to actually live there. Maybe setting up the utility bills into Smoothie Jr’s name would suffice.
Would the savings be enough to cover the cost of the armored vehicle, trip wires, booby traps, arms collection and video surveillance/ early warning system?
“OK, Smoothie Jr., It says here that you went to school in X State, but lived in this shack in our state for the past year?”
– state official in charge of collecting out-of-state tuition
OK, I had an occasion to look this up before. This is the University of Minnesota’s pamphlet on their definitions of residency. I would assume that Shack-State-U has a similar document.
Maybe it means that Smoothie JR goes to a JR college in Shack state for a year. I don’t know.
My point is that you gotta read all the fine print in order to figure out which loophole you are going to drive through.
I’m with you. I’m rooting for you to do this, for this reason: We pay too much damn taxes to not get decent services from our state and/or state institutions.
I grew up in state X. I went to a state university in state Y, and I went through the process to get declared “in state” for tuition purposes.
I forget what the precise rule was, but to get in-state tuition, I did the following:
I needed to show that I "lived’ in state. I couldn’t claim to live in campus housing, and I had been warned that claiming a residence in student slums off campus would be challenged. So, officially I moved in with my grandfather, who lived in another part of state Y.
As part of showing that I lived in state, I got a drivers license, registered to vote, and updated my Selective Service registration to reflect my grandfather’s address.
I did my taxes as if I were a state Y resident. (Shame, since state X had no state income tax…but I didn’t exactly have much in the way of taxable income.)
Rules for “in state” said that I could have been out of state no more than x days in the year prior to my application. I think x could have been as small as 31. I actually listed the dates/reasons I had left the state in the 365 days prior to my application.
I had to attest that I intended to remain in state after graduation. At the time, I could do it with a straight face, since most actuarial science graduates went on to work in the largest city in state Y…but it didn’t actually turn out that way.
We considered putting my name on the deed for the a family member’s farm in state Y to add support for my application, since owning property in the state would have bolstered the application to change status…but that wasn’t necessary.
The rules probably vary from state to state, perhaps even from school to school. I remember that conventional wisdom was that the rules to get in-state in state Y were considered fairly easy/straightforward as compared to other states.
Also, my experience was over 30 years ago. Things may have changed since then.
Does your current state have reciprocity agreement with shack state? If so, it doesn’t matter (assuming the school you are looking at is included e.g. CO School of Mines does not participate in the CO reciprocity agreement).
Pretty much what MS said. If Mini CS is attending HS in state A he’s not going to be able to immediately claim in-state residency in state B.
But if, immediately upon graduation, Mini CS moves to B, registers to vote in B, gets a driver’s license in B, registers his car in B (if applicable) declares part-year residency in each state on his income taxes, gets his mail that can be tracked (bills & such) delivered to his address in B, and changes his selective service registration to B then once the requisite time has passed then Mini CS is now a resident of B. It will further bolster his case if at least one of his parents does these things too. Most kids don’t immediately move out on their own upon graduation from high school so the timing is likely to arouse suspicion.
I did the opposite: I changed my address to an out-of-state one while I was in college but I was able to maintain my in-state residency and pay in-state tuition by demonstrating that I was not in my new state enough to establish residency there.
But in my case I legit lived in state throughout high school. I was switching to the out of state address to get a parking permit. You had to have a reason to get the permit and living out of state and more than 200 miles from school was considered a valid reason. My then-fiancé was out of state more than 200 miles away so I used his address … and to be fair that’s really where I was going for a decent number of school breaks & stuff.
I had a few friends who did something similar. I went to college in a very large state with beaches, so many out of state students from neighboring states had parents with beach houses in state, so they just said they “moved” at those beach houses. I am not sure exactly what they had to do to prove it but they were able to get in-state tuition after 2 years
Yes it is easier to just invest in an index fund than sink time/money/effort into maintaining a property solely to pay less for college tuition (if your kid even wants to go to a state school)