If you want to claim your child as a dependent, in most case the child will have to have lived with you for most (over 50%) of the year. Otherwise, the person with whom the child resided, in most cases the parent with legal custody, is the person entitled to the dependent child claim.

You may be able to claim a child that doesn’t live with you as a dependent, provided the parent with custody signs a Form 8332, Release of Claim to Exemption, or offers the required information similar to the Form 8332 on a separate form. In doing so, the other parents relinquishes their claim to dependency exemption in relation to the child indicated on the form. This signed form is usually the only way you can claim a dependency exemption for a child who did not live with you, as the child is often the qualifying child of another person, and a dependent can only be claimed once.