Claim girlfriends kids if I marry girlfriend

[user17569136886]

Claim girlfriends kids as dependents and earned income credit?

[xmasbaby0]

If you and your GF are not legally married, you can only claim her children as "other dependents" for the $500 credit for other dependents----IF they lived with you for the WHOLE year and if you paid for over half of their support.  You do not mention if GF has income and would be claiming the children so we cannot say if you would even be able to claim them for the $500 credit if you are living together.

Unless you are their legal step-parent, you cannot get earned income credit or child tax credit by claiming your GF's children.   

If you and GF become legally married, step-children can be claimed as dependents on a joint tax return that you and your spouse file together.   If you are legally married, you  (and your spouse) might be eligible for earned income credit and the child tax credit and additional child tax credit.   You are considered to be married for the entire year by the IRS even if you get married on December 31.

 However---we still do not have any information about whether there is another parent who might also be able to claim the children---more information is needed.

[rjs]

There are a lot of requirements to be able to claim someone as a dependent, and a lot of requirements to be able to claim the earned income credit. The rules are complicated. xmasbaby0 has outlined a few of the basic rules.

If you marry your girlfriend before the end of the tax year, her children would then become your stepchildren. For income tax purposes a stepchild is treated the same as your own child, so they would meet the relationship test for claiming a dependent and for the earned income credit. But there are many other tests that must be satisfied, including their ages, who they live with, who provides their support, their income, etc. We do not have anywhere near enough information to be able to say whether you could claim the children as dependents or claim the earned income credit.

If your girlfriend has given the children's father permission to claim them for the year in question, then you and she could not claim them as dependents. However, she might still be able to use them to qualify for the earned income credit, if other requirements are met.