Who can claim my child as a dependent?

[Vanessa A]

It depends.  Does your mom have legal guardianship of your son?  If so, then she would likely be the one to claim him as this would be considered equal to a parent, especially if you are not living in the house with them all the time.  In the case of who can claim a child 6 months is the magic number, so if your child lived with your mom for a year, then yes, she would still be able to claim him as a dependent IF you were not living there with him. 

Even if she does not have legal guardianship, if he lived with your mom for over 6 months alone, without you there, during the tax year, that means she would be able to claim him as a dependent on her return since you would NOT be eligible if you were not living with him for more than 6 months. 

If your son is living with you, regardless of whether that be in your moms home, on a friends couch, in a car or wherever, for more than 6 months of the year, you would be able to claim him as a dependent on your return if he is not providing more than half of his own support and his other parent does not also live with him for more than 6 months of the year. If he meets the qualifications to be YOUR qualifying child, under the tie-breaker rules, the parents get priority to claim the child. 

The following criteria must be met to claim someone as a qualifying child:

• Your child (including adopted and foster children), your sibling, or a descendent of any of them.
• Age 18 or younger at the end of the tax year OR under 24 (and younger than you and your spouse) if they are a full-time student
• Lived with you for more than 6 months during the tax year
• They did not provide more than half of their own support (social security does not count)
• They did not file a joint return, unless it was to claim a refund

When it comes down to who gets to claim the child, below are the tiebreaker rules.  Basically, if all else is equal, the parent gets to claim the child. 

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. IRS TIEBREAKER RULES