Sup ya beautiful bastards, hope you've been a fantastic Tuesday. Welcome back to the Philip

DeFranco show and let's just jump into it. And the first thing we're going to talk about

today is another college scandal. So according to ProPublica and the Wall Street Journal,

there are wealthy families in the state of Illinois that are transferring the guardianship of

their child at some point during their junior or senior year of high school to a family friend

or a family member so that when the student applies for financial aid and

scholarships for college, they can identify themselves as financially independent from their families, and thus get more financial aid.

And here's kind of an example that was provided to show how it works.

In one case, a family in the Chicago area transferred the guardianship of their 17-year-old daughter to one of their mother's co-workers. That initial family had a household income higher than $250,000 and lived in a house valued at more than $1 million. But after their daughter's guardianship

was transferred, the only income she had to claim was a little over $4,000 from a summer job. And she

ended up going to a private school with a tuition of $65,000 and got $27,000 in merit scholarships and 20,000 in need-based aid. Now as far as the process of transferring the guardianship, the family told the journal that it was actually pretty easy and mainly just paperwork.

The coworker had to attend one court hearing. The daughter didn't even have to go and neither did her parents.

And at this point you may have the question of, well, is this legal? And well, the answer is actually yes. Now that said, according to reports, several schools in Illinois are starting to take a closer look at the situation.

With Andrew Bourse, the director of undergraduate enrollment at the University of Illinois, saying,

our financial aid resources are limited in the practice of wealthy parents transferring the guardianship of their children to qualify for need-based financial aid,

or so-called opportunity hoarding, takes away resources for middle and low-income students.

This is legal, but we question the ethics. Now as far as how widespread this is, that's not known right now, but the Journal did look at court documents and found 38 cases where juniors or seniors in high school had their guardianship transferred with many of those families living in homes valued over half a million dollars. Also as far as the specifics of the process in Illinois, even if a parent can provide care to a child, a court can still transfer guardianship, so long as the parents relinquished care, the child and the new guardian consent, and a court finds that it is in the child's best interest. And regarding that last note, in most of the 38 cases, the language used to justify why it was in the child's best interest usually resemble, the guardian can provide educational and financial support

and opportunities to the minor that her parents could not otherwise provide. Also regarding the

moral question, right, is this okay? Is it not? ProPublic has spoke to someone who actually became

a child's legal guardian for this reason, and he said that he wrestled with the ethics of the matter

because his wife works at a college, so he saw the situation from both sides. Adding they were afraid that by doing this, they could take aid away from another family,

even though he was told that this would not be the case, saying, quote,

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