Claiming my child

[Mr_Cruz]

I live with my daughter's mother and she wants to claim her but I want to claim her on mine. I am the head of the household and earn substantially more than she does. Her mother is not on my lease and no bills are under her name. What will happen if both of us claim our daughter?

[DashonnonH]

If more than one person qualifies to claim the same child. The IRS will use the tie breaker rules to decide who gets to claim the child. 

https://www.eitc.irs.gov/eitc-central/applying-tiebreaker-rules

TieBreaker Rules

Sometimes a child meets the rules to be a qualifying child of more than one person. The following rules must be applied to determine who can claim the child as a qualifying child. Under the tie-breaker rule, the child is treated as a qualifying child:

• The parent, if only one of the persons is the child's parent,
• The parent with whom the child lived the longest during the tax year, if two of the persons are the child's parent and they do not file a joint return together,
• The parent with the highest AGI if the child lived with each parent for the same amount of time during the tax year, and they do not file a joint return together,
• A non-parent, if no parent claims the child as a qualifying child although he or she may do so and only if the non-parent's AGI is higher than the highest AGI of any parent who may claim the child, or
• The person with the highest AGI, if none of the persons is the child's parent.

This information is found in Publication 501, Dependents, Standard Deduction, and Filing Information.