@kjblue6 wrote:
I was also a full-time Nurse Practitioner student and lived off loans. Does that qualify as income?
To benefit from the $2000 per child tax credit, you must have taxable income. To get a refundable credit (a refund that does more than zero out your tax) you must have earned income from working (a W-2 job that withholds social security and medicare tax, or self-employment on schedule C).
If you have no taxable income and no earned income, you won't get anything for claiming your children. If you were to agree to let the other parent claim the children even though it is not "their year", they might get a cash benefit depending on their other tax situations, and they could give some of that money to you if you both agreed.
Note that you can't "share" the child dependents with any other person unless they are your parent or your older sibling and they lived in the same home with you and the children for more than half the year. You can only share them with your ex.
