Criteria

• If you live apart from your spouse and are legally separated on the last day of the tax year, then you are considered unmarried for the purposes of filing. If, in addition to living apart from your spouse and being legally separated, you also paid more than half the cost of maintaining your household and had a qualifying dependent or another qualifying person live with you, then you can claim head of household as your filing status while you are separated.
  
  

Qualifying person

• To be considered a qualifying child for the purposes of filing as head of household, the child must meet the relationship, age and support test --- the child must be your child, stepchild, foster child, sibling, stepsibling or an extension of one of these persons. The child must also be under age 19 at the end of the tax year (or under age 24 if the child is a full-time student) to meet the age test and you must have provided the majority of support for the child in order to meet the support test. If the child meets these criteria, then he is considered a qualifying child for the purposes of filing. For the purposes of claiming head of household, a qualifying person is a person who lived with you for more than half the tax year and is related to you.
  
  

Considerations

• You can change your filing status by completing IRS form 1040X and mailing it to the IRS campus that processed your original income tax return. The time frame for processing 1040X is 8 to 12 weeks, and the form cannot be filed electronically.