Family
Paperwork for caring for a child who is not your own
Several different legal arrangements, and the one you need depends on what you are trying to do rather than on the living situation.
A relative caring for a child informally can usually handle daily life, but hits walls at school enrolment and medical consent. Many states have a caregiver authorisation affidavit for exactly this — a form signed by a parent giving a named relative authority for school and health decisions without any court involvement.
Legal guardianship is a court order transferring decision-making authority while leaving parental rights intact. It is more durable, it can usually be ended by the court, and it is what schools and hospitals accept without argument. Adoption is a permanent transfer and a different process entirely.
Benefits follow the arrangement in ways that are not intuitive. Some support is available to a caregiver regardless of their own income, through a child-only route, and formal kinship arrangements through a child welfare agency can carry support that informal ones do not.
Because the terminology and the forms differ by state, the court's own self-help centre is the right starting point, and many legal aid organisations run clinics specifically on kinship care.
What to do next. Ask your state court's self-help centre which arrangement fits what you need to do — school, medical, or both — before filing anything.
studentaid.gov outranks this page. Rules, figures and dates change
between academic years. This is written to help you read the official sources, not to
stand in front of them. Start there.
Nothing here is a determination. We cannot tell you what you qualify
for, and no website can. The programme and the office that runs it decide that, after
you apply.
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Describe what you are trying to work out and a member of the team will answer, or direct you to the office that makes the decision.