The question is, can my wife and I claim my 21 year old daughter, who is a college student, as a dependent, when over 50% of her support comes from a 529 plan that she owns, but which is comprised entirely of contributions from my wife and myself.
For some reason, when we established the 529 account, we apparently made my daughter the owner. This year, the majority of her support comes from 529 withdrawals, and she is the legal owner of the account. My first inclination is that we cannot claim her as a dependent, since we're no longer, technically, providing over 50% of her support. But the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Those contributions came entirely from us. I would argue that we are still, in actuality, providing more than 50% of her support, since the primary source of her support (the 529 plan) is all money that we set aside for her over the years. However, I can't find any articles online that seem to address this issue. Does anyone have any insight into this?
