My daughter had a baby on 2/4/2010, and she was born with several life birth defects, they both lived with us up until December. We had to use our life savings to take her back and forth to a children's hospital 2 hours away. She had to have several life saving surgeries. For her first 4 to 5 months of life we basically lived at the hospital. We continue to take her every month to see the specialists. My question is my daughter did file taxes and she made around $12,000, and she needed the refund, so she claimed her. Can we still claim the medical deductions even though we didn't claim her as a dependent? Thank you..

In order to claim the medical expenses, they must be incurred by you, your spouse or one of your dependents.

Unless your daughter is in college, you CANNOT claim her as a dependent, because she made too much money.

You meet all of the criteria to claim your grandchild as a qualifying child, but so does your daughter, and the FIRST tiebreaker is the parent gets to claim the child if the disputing parties cannot agree.

What you need to do is model your return to determine how much the medical deductions and other deductions and credits affects your return versus your daughter's return. If you determine that YOU claiming the grandchild results in a greater tax savings, then you need to convince your daughter to AMEND her return to "UNCLAIM" your grandchild, wait for that amendment to process, then file your return and claim your grandchild as your dependent.

That is the ONLY way you can legally claim the grandchild's medical expenses on your tax return.

Also if you decide to do this make sure you do give her the amount of refund she would have got.

Comment on AtlantaTaxExpert's post - Also if you decide to do this make sure you do give her the amount of refund she would have got.


Where do you read that this is a requirement in this situation?