If you pay medical expenses this year for your child or another person who no longer qualifies as your dependent, but the medical services were provided when the child or other person did qualify as your dependent, you can deduct the medical expenses you paid.
Adopted Chile
In the case of an adopted child, you can include medical expenses you paid before the adoption, if the child qualified as your dependent when the medical services were provided or when you paid for them. If you pay back an adoption agency or other persons for medical expenses of the child you adopt, you can claim those payments as medical deductions if you can clearly show that the payment was directly for the child’s medical care.
Child of Divorced or Separated Parents
If a child’s parents are divorced, legally separated, or lived apart at all times during the last six months of the year, each parent can include the medical expenses he or she pays for the child, even if the other parent claims the exemption for the child. This is provided that the child is in the custody of one or both parents for more than half the year and the child receives over half of his or her support during the year from the parents. In this sense, for purposes of the medical expenses deduction, the child can be treated as a dependent of both parents – each deducts the medical expenses her or she pays.
Multiple Support Agreement
In a multiple support agreement, two or more people provide for a person’s support, but no one alone provides more than half the support. This may occur, for example, when siblings join together to support one or both of their parents. If according to the multiple support agreement you are the person who is considered to have provided more than half of a person’s support, you can deduct the medical expenses you pay for that person, even if you cannot claim an exemption for that person on your tax return.
Any medical expenses paid by the other persons who joined you in the multiple support agreement cannot be claimed as medical expenses by anyone. But if you paid medical expenses and were not reimbursed by the other participants in the agreement, you can include the entire amount you paid for medical expenses.