My husband and I are not legally separated yet. And he is not being cooperative with filing taxes

[beliv-lia]

He wants to claim our daughter, but we have joint custody. I'm in tears writing this because he is making this so difficult. I have no idea how to do this when he will not provide information. I gave him a deadline to communicate with me or a lawyer will have to get involved. But I don't have the money to get a lawyer! Please help.

[TomD8 · Accepted solution]

The right to claim the child belongs to the custodial parent - the parent with whom the child spent the greater number of nights during the tax year.  If the child spent an equal number of nights with each parent, the right goes to the parent who had the higher adjusted gross income (AGI) in 2016.

[beliv-lia]

Thank you TomD8. I am in agreement with him having the deduction as he has paid for after school care. There have been circumstances during the year (2016) that he needed me to have her more days on certain weeks. But I'm sure in any shared custody case, sickness or work related obstacles have caused one parent to share more of the responsibility. Honestly, my issue is with answering some of these questions on turbo-tax that are referring to information he would only know. I don't know what itemized deductions he may be doing, or how much? I haven't seen the entire list of questions. I stopped at "itemized deductions" for him.

[TomD8]

If you and your husband lived apart for the entire last 6 months of 2016, and the child lived more than 6 months with you in a home that you paid more than half the cost of keeping up, then you can file as Head of Household even if he claims the child - which should be easier than Married Filing Separate.