Can't access my son's FAFSA parent portion despite husband completing his part - help!

same thing happened to me! their system is so broken this year with the new FAFSA. my wife could access but i couldnt for our daughter. try using chrome in incognito mode, worked for me after 3 days of trying

This is actually a common issue with the new FAFSA system. The problem is that the invitation links expire after 14 days, and sometimes the system doesn't properly connect contributor accounts when you have your own FSA ID from previous college enrollment. Here's what you need to do: 1. Have your son log into his FAFSA account 2. Ask him to go to the "Contributors" section 3. He needs to delete your current invitation and send a new one 4. When you receive the new email, open it on a fresh browser (incognito works well) 5. IMPORTANT: Make sure you're using the exact email address that he sent the invitation to If that doesn't work, there's another approach - your son can actually manually enter your information himself if you provide it to him. This isn't ideal from a privacy standpoint, but it's a workaround many families are using when the contributor system fails.

The new FAFSA is GARBAGE! I had to fill out FOUR SEPARATE FORMS because of glitches like this. My husband never got his to work AT ALL and we had to use the manual option where I just entered all his info myself. The whole contributor system is broken and FSA knows it but won't admit it. My daughter almost missed her priority deadline because of this nonsense. The old FAFSA was complicated but at least it WORKED.

There's another technical issue that could be happening here. If you already have an FSA ID from your previous education, your account might be experiencing a "role conflict" in the system. The FAFSA portal sometimes struggles to recognize when someone needs to access both as a former student AND as a parent contributor. Try this more technical fix: 1. Go directly to studentaid.gov (not through the invitation link) 2. Log in with your FSA ID 3. Go to "Account Settings" in your profile 4. Look for "Account Functions" or "User Roles" 5. Make sure your account has both "Student" and "Parent" roles enabled 6. Log out completely 7. THEN try the invitation link again This resolved the issue for several parents in similar situations.

my daughter had similar problem. we called fafsa but waited 3 hours and got disconnected!!!! waste of time. ended up just having her fill everything out herself with our tax info. not ideal but it worked and she got her SAI score last week

Have you checked if your email address is exactly the same on both systems? When my wife was having a similar issue, we discovered that she had used firstname.lastname@gmail for her FSA ID but our daughter sent the invitation to firstnamelastname@gmail (without the dot). Even though Gmail treats those as the same email, the FAFSA system sees them as completely different accounts! Worth checking if there's any tiny difference in how your email is entered.

just wondering does anyone know if both parents HAVE to fill out the form separately? My wife did hers but I'm having the same issue as OP. Will it affect our son's SAI if only one parent completes it?

UPDATE: IT WORKED! I followed the advice about checking account roles and discovered I only had "Student" enabled. After adding the "Parent" role, logging out completely, and using the fresh invitation link my son sent, I was able to access his FAFSA as a contributor! Currently finishing up my section now. Thank you all so much for your help!