The Septimus Notes

Sunday, May 29, 2005

|So that's what it takes?!|

Friday I went into work and talked to my co-worker who had managed to get a Fee Waiver from LSAC. I wanted to know that, with what information I had about her, how she could get a fee waiver and I couldn't.

My information was both incomplete and inaccurate.

She is not an only child, but has two younger siblings. As well, I knew, but had forgotten that her mother had passed away not too long ago.

Moreover, at the time that she applied to LSAC for a fee waiver, she had been studying in Paris for the whole school year, and so while normally she would have had an income, for that particular fiscal tax year, she had no income. As well, shortly before she returned to the states (and prompting an early return) there was a massive, industrial fire in her father's jewelry store. Everything was burned -- including her father. He's alive now and doing comparitively well, but he was burned over 80% of his body and was in a coma for five months.

Her father, something of a paranoid conspiracy theorist type (at least that's what I get from her) maintained meticulous records of everything: tax forms, will, etc. in a fireproof safe (the only copies, in fact). But the night of the fire, wouldn't you know it, he had left the safe door open. There was a massive legal quagmire because my co-worker could not get access to anything because she did not have power of attorney over her father and he was in a coma and thus could not grant it to her or anyone else. They managed to convince the courts to grant over "custody" over her siblings, and relied on the help of relatives and family friends until her father woke up.

So, she managed to get an LSAC fee waiver because:

1) She had no income for a year
2) Had $400 in the bank
3) Had to "dependent" children
4) A dead mother
5) A father in a coma

Yeah, I really cannot compete with that.

And, as far as my co-worker, things are good now. And things were mostly good up until that clusterfuck of badness that was her summer last year.

But, really, is that what it takes to get a fee waiver?

promulgated by SWS2.1 at 18:11.
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