Residency Question
- Thread starter Red_Fox
- Start date
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2010
- Messages
- 15,994
You retain residency in your home state wherever you go to college. Being in the military has nothing to do with it. Presumably you live with your parents right now. Your residency stays at their address (or the address of whomever you're currently living with).
This topic has come up before, usually for people that want to change their residency to the location of their college. For a variety of reasons I did some research on this issue. There is no specific law that says a college student's legal residency remains in his parents' home state. Residency is determined by a variety of factors - where you live for the majority of the year, where you are registered to vote, where your driver's license is maintained, where you work, etc.
The more important question is what is your purpose in wanting to maintain legal residency in one place over another. Various government and non government entities have different rules for residency. The IRS has one set of rules for tax liabilites, individual state universities have different rules for in-state tution, some states have strict rules about residency for fishing and hunting licenses.
There are several very interesting court cases in which college students registered to vote in very large numbers in the city or town where they attended school, helped pass laws that were unpopular with the other local citizens and then the non-student citizens tried to says these students were not really residents of that particular city or state. The vast majority of these cases upheld the students right to choose their location of residency, at least for voting purposes.
The more important question is what is your purpose in wanting to maintain legal residency in one place over another. Various government and non government entities have different rules for residency. The IRS has one set of rules for tax liabilites, individual state universities have different rules for in-state tution, some states have strict rules about residency for fishing and hunting licenses.
There are several very interesting court cases in which college students registered to vote in very large numbers in the city or town where they attended school, helped pass laws that were unpopular with the other local citizens and then the non-student citizens tried to says these students were not really residents of that particular city or state. The vast majority of these cases upheld the students right to choose their location of residency, at least for voting purposes.