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Originally Posted by willravel
Under those circumstances, it would be very easy for your kid to become an emancipated minor. If that happened, he could actually take some of your paycheck.
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Uh, no. Emancipated does not mean "gets to do whatever the hell he wants and still collect cash from mommy and daddy." If he goes for and obtains complete emancipation, then he's emancipated. He supports himself. I am no longer legally responsible for him.
Now, he could TRY for a partial emancipation, but 1) that's not very well supported and is generally only used to allow a kid to make her own decisions about a pregnancy, and 2) I'd love to see some jerk kid get up and say "I don't like being punished so I want to be emancipated only from that aspect of the family." The judge will laugh him out of the courtroom.
Additionally in order to achieve emancipation you have to show that certain conditions exist. Either that someone else is now responsible for you (i.e. you join the military at 17, they are now responsible for you, you can be emancipated from your parents) or that your parents are abusive, neglectful, or are not supporting you. I would challenge you to find me someone (other than the kid) who would claim that removing TV privileges is abusive or neglectful.
Also, regarding the driver license issue, you're wrong there as well. Many states require parental consent from whatever the driving age is until age 18. The parent can revoke that consent at any time. Yes, I can take Junior's license.
Further, regarding property, minors do not have the right to contract. That means minors cannot receive property or assets. The assets must be transferred to a trust in the child's name if they want the kid to "officially" receive it. Therefore, if Junior buys a television, it's not his unless I say it is.
To be more specific, while minors can technically own property (Junior has a TV) they cannot exercise their rights in that property until they are no longer a minor. The responsibility for exercising the property rights falls to the trustee if a trust is set up, or to the legal guardian of the child if not. Therefore Junior can own the television, and I can decide what happens to it. Most state's uniform gifts to minors acts (everything a minor receives is a gift, even if he works for it, because he cannot enter into a contract) specify that I cannot do anything with regard to dispensing the property that does not benefit the kid. In other words, I can't smash the TV or give it away, or sell it and keep the money, but I can lock it away in a closet where he can't get to it because the property is still there ready for him to exercise his rights to it when he becomes an adult.
Since I can't steal something from him that he does not have the rights to, he can call the cops all he wants, it's not gonna hurt me.
In fairness to my kid, I should point out that all of this is purely in the realm of alternate-universe hypotheticals here, because he's a damn good kid and would never think of calling the cops on me for taking his stuff as punishment - -but then I very rarely have to punish him anyway, so that's a nonissue too.
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That's simply not true. Most parents are complete idiots who have no business rasing a cat or dog, let alone a child.
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100 % true.
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I dare you to look at George W. Bush and tell me his parents didn't fuck up.
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And then look at his daughters and note the pattern.
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I've never had to use physical violence on my kid and I never will. I know it down to my bones. I've essentially already raised a few kids, 2 cousins and a little brother, and I've never had to resort to physical violence. I never had to starve them. I never had to do anything but talk or maybe time outs for little ones.
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we agree here too. Hitting kids is stupid. Teaches them the exact opposite of the lessons they SHOULD be learning. We sit there and tell the kid "it's not OK to hit when you're angry" and then we hit him when we get angry at him. Stupid.