Your husband can claim your son as a dependent if you give him a permission. It will allow him to reduce his taxable income by $3700 (your son's personal exemption). Since you don't have any taxable income it would be reasonable for you to waive your right to your son's exemption to his father. You have to sign a wtitten declaration (Form 8332) and give it to your son's father. He should attach this declaration to his tax return.

Unfortunately, since your son doesn't live with your ex-husband, your ex-husband can't claim Child Tax Credit or Head of Household status (if he doesn't have any other dependents living with him). To qualify for this credit, you ex-husband shoud have provided the house for your son for more than half of the year.

My adult daughter also lives with me and she works full time. She helps with household expenses. So can she claim my son on his return? I feel that someone should get the Child Tax credit.

If your son is disabled, is he receiving SSI and or child support along with benefiting from other forms of public aid like medicare, food stamps, subsidized housing, free school lunch, etc, because you stay home to care for him? You need to calculate his total support and then look at how much of your son's support she pays, not simply what she does to contributing the entire household including you and herself.

If your adult daughter contributes to the household to offset her own share of the costs of her living there, can she then truthfully claim that she's paying not only her own personal share in addition to more than half of her younger sibling's total expenses for the year? Have her sit down and do the math.

If not, you can't lend/borrow/sell your dependents to others simply because you can't benefit from the EIC.

To the above poster: Look, just because my son is disabled and I'm a single mother does NOT mean that I'm getting all those "freebies" you mentioned. My son was getting SSI even when his father was home. I most certainly don't have an "easy" life as you hinted. My son has severe autism and it is very difficult. There is no child care here that accepts special needs children. So how am I supposed to work and who will take care of my child? His father doesn't want to have much to do with him and my daughter helps with his care financially and physically. I just came here to see who can claim him, that's all.
Sorry but your post was more critical than helpful!

The four rules of claiming child as your dependent are:

1. Relationship rule. A child should have a specified relationship to a taxpayer (brother is qualified).
2. Household rule. A child should have the same home as a taxpayer for more than one half of taxable year.
3. Age rule. A child should be younger than 18, or 24 if a full-student, or disabled.
4. Support rule. A child who provides over half of his own support is not considered to be qualifying child of another taxpayer.

So, your son can be a qualifying child of your daughter if he satisfies all the rules.

Good luck!

Thank you for the helpful information!

"To the above poster: Look, just because my son is disabled and I'm a single mother does NOT mean that I'm getting all those "freebies" you mentioned."

No kidding. Perhaps you don't know what the word "if" means or why I chose to use it.

So he is being supported by disability and child support. Your daughter contends she supplies more support to your son than those other sources. Hey, that's fabulous! As I stated above, she should have records to substantiate her claim.

Nothing about my son's disability is "fabulous". Not even the SSI and I don't care what anyone says, he deserves that. Every penny goes for his needs and care. And the child support is a paltry amount, which his father should pay, he never even got our son a gift for Christmas. My daughter pays for my son's expenses MUCH more than he pays in support so yes, she should be the one to claim him! And she will too.

In a case of contention about who gets to claim a dependent, the IRS tends to rule for the parent first. If the parents choose not to claim the child, then someone who is supporting the child and has a higher income than the parents (individually, in your case, not combined) can claim the child.

Perhaps your question was too neutrally phrased -- you don't want your ex to claim the child? Then we would have looked more carefully at who was eligible to claim him. But his father certainly can, legally, as long as you (providing the house) and he (paying child support) manage to be the primary providers for your son. It is a myth that one of the parents has to provide more than 50% by him/herself, to claim a qualifying child.