@macuser_22 wrote:
What I am concerned by is your statement "But if the emancipation date is before 6 months passed then custody ends and nobody had custody more than 6 months."
To me, it sounds like you are saying that after emancipation, neither parent has custody and neither parent can claim the child as a QC dependent. The regulation and example 6 in the regulation say that after emancipation, we fall back to the normal rules, which say that the parent in this case can claim their emancipated 20-year old college student children as dependents because they lived with the parent and meet the normal QC dependent rules.
Bottom line for this parent as far as § 1.152-4(g) is concerned, is that this parent can claim her 20-year old college-attending children as dependents because they lived with her more than half the year.
Separately, where there appears to be a conflict in the IRS documents between the examples in the regulation and the examples in pub 501, I think I should just drop that for now. The different examples are similar, but the fact patterns are subtly different, and much more thought is required on my part.
