It depends, the
child must qualify as a dependent child. To determine or confirm if the
child does, please use the interactive questionnaire from the IRS site; Who Can I Claim
As A Dependent? If more than one parent qualifies and the child does
not provide more than half of their own support, you can determine who should
claim the child using this IRS link; Child
Tiebreaker. The rule
is summarized below:
Under the
tie-breaker rule, the child is treated as a qualifying child only by:
- The parents if they file a
joint return;
- 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 Adjusted
Gross Income (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;
- The person with the highest
AGI if no parent can claim the child as a qualifying child; or
- A person with the higher AGI
than any parent who can also claim the child as a qualifying child but
does not.
