Short Stuff: Divorcing Your Parents

It really happens! But most people call it emancipation of a minor. Either way, there's some interesting legal stuff in here.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, I'm welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and we're just a couple of ros. Maybe
we're doing a couple of bras hanging out doing our thing,
talking about cool stuff, and that makes the short stuff
because it's a short version of that. That's right, We're
gonna talk about divorcing your parents today. Shout out to
a bunch of law firms and law schools for this one. Right, Yeah,

(00:27):
Blacks Law Dictionary love to know, uh, Cornell Law School
in the Virga Law Firm. That's right, because when you're
talking about divorcing your parents, uh, well, first of all,
we can't not mention your reconcilable differences because we'll just
get too much mail. Have you ever seen it? Did?
I did not see that? This was the movie from

(00:47):
with the precocious young Drew Barrymore divorcing her parents, and
I think one of them was Ryan O'Neill, Right, who
was the other Shelley Long? Oh of course? Yeah? So
um that would that mean that she was fresh off
of the terrible mistake of leaving cheers or about to
be eighty four? I feel like that's in during Cheers?

(01:10):
Does does seem like that, doesn't it. Yeah, I think
so so. Um yeah, and a little Drew Barren Bart
divorces her parents and and it seems like, Okay, does
that actually happen. Yeah, it totally does happen. They don't
call it divorcing your parents, but it's actually, um, it's
a legal proceeding called, um, the emancipation of a minor.
I think kids on the playground probably call it divorcing

(01:32):
your parents. Yeah, that's what i'd call it. Todd divorced
his parents. Did you hear that? Yeah, I would totally
say that. Uh. Yeah. But legal emancipation, that is the
the legal term when a child basically steps forward and
says I am not well. It depends on what state
you're in as far as what we call being the

(01:53):
age of legal majority. Uh. And each state has their
own age for that um. But spending on where you are,
it could be eighteen years old that you're a legal
adult and you are on your own as far as
being legally major. Uh. California's is as very low as
far as when you can emancipate. Uh. Most states is

(02:16):
about sixteen, But in California because of the movie industry,
because It's a very common thing in the movie industry
to get emancipated from your parents. Not because even for
the fact that you want to leave them necessarily, Uh,
it just makes things a lot easier sometimes, um for
your career. Yeah, because legally, until you reach the age

(02:38):
of majority, your parents basically own you. You have like
much fewer legal rights than you do as an eighteen
year old on um. But in return, your parents are
supposed to hold up there under the bargain. They have
legal obligations and responsibilities to care for you, to clothe you,
to make sure you go to school, to make sure
that your are your health has taken care of your

(02:59):
medical um uh, medical treatments are seen to and so
like if the parents break that contract, kids can say, my,
my parents not not doing a very good job with this.
I don't want to have anything to do with them.
I want to basically take care of myself. I'm not
eighteen yet, so I want to become emancipated and basically
speed up that time to legal majority. Yeah. And like

(03:22):
I said, in the film industry, like a lot of
times a parent will will be behind this and they'll
still live at home even but it just makes certain
aspects of running their career in their life a little
bit easier if they're emancipated. But sometimes, you know, there
there are actors and and we'll get into the you know,
sad cases of why else a kid might do this.
But in some cases there are kid actors that like

(03:45):
aren't necessarily from l a and their parents live in
you know, Oklahoma, and the kid goes off and lives
on their own in an apartment when they're fifteen years old. Yeah.
I think it also protects the child's earnings too, because
your parents can basically spend the money that you're earning
if you're under the legal age of majority. So I

(04:08):
think that's also a big reason why it happens in
Hollywood among child actors most of all. Yeah, and if
you are emancipated as a kid um you can do
most of the things you Obviously if you can't drive,
if you're not legal driving age, or drink or vote
or things like that doesn't change anything like that. But
you can sign a contract on your own without like

(04:30):
a parent having to co sign. You can work and
keep that money, like you said, you can, you can
get that apartment if you want to. You can sue somebody,
you can get sued by somebody. You can pick out
what school you want to go to. UM. A lot
of rights are granted to you. Kind of the decisions
like you said that an adult would make, you can
now make. Right. UM, there are some things that you

(04:50):
can't do. You're not allowed to drop out of school
unless you're actively pursuing a g E. D Um. That's
a big one. I didn't see what the penalties are
of that, Like, I don't know how they would keep
you from doing that, but supposedly that's part of the bargain. Um.
And then also, if you're not of the age of
consent to be married, you can't marry without your parents consent,

(05:12):
even if you're already emancipated, unless in a bunch of states,
if you're already pregnant in you're a minor or, you
already have a child in your a minor, you can
marry without parental consent. That's right. Uh, why don't we
take a break and we'll talk aside from being in
the film industry, some other reasons why you might want

(05:32):
to divorce your parents, and then how you might want
to go about that. All right, So we mentioned movie

(06:03):
star kids. Sometimes that's a very common thing in California
to emancipate from your folks. Um. The sad other half
of this is you're a kid in a very bad
home life, in a bad situation, who's has parents that
aren't taking care of you like they should or possibly
abusing you. And this is when a kid can step

(06:24):
forward and these are This is a whole different thing
when you go to the court and say hey, I uh,
because in California, you know, it's so common. It's a
very open and shut process. It's very speedy, and it's
not a big deal. But if you go in there
and say, hey, I want to emancipate for my parents
because I don't get the care I deserve or being abused,

(06:45):
then it becomes almost like a trial. Yeah. So, um,
if that's the circumstance that you're seeking emancipation for, um, yeah,
it is. It's a legal proceeding where both sides get
to offer evidence and argue their case. Your parents have
to be notified of these proceedings so that they can
show up and contest it and be like, no, we
want to be able to keep stealing his newspaper money.

(07:08):
Um or for whatever reason they want to contest it.
So it is very much like a legal proceeding. But
here's there's a lot of weird catches to this, and
this is why this is so fascinating to me, is
in a lot of states, and maybe even all states,
if you are under the age of legal majority, you
cannot seek relief from a court on your own. The
court basically doesn't recognize you as somebody who can, like

(07:30):
like you said earlier, sue people or be suit in court,
so they have to assign specific people to you, not
even lawyers necessarily. But they're called guardian ad items and
they're basically advocates for the kid, working for the kid's
best interests in these cases. Right, So that are they
the ones that technically have to file this uh motion? Yes, yes,

(07:53):
so yeah, I think in some states the kid can,
but I think in most cases that guardian ad item
has to or you can. You know, if you already
have a bunch of use paper money so you saved up,
you can hire your own lawyer to do this too,
And I guess technically a parent could do so, but
if you're trying to divorce your parents, that's kind of counterintuitive.
Unless it's a situation where it's mutual well or there's well,

(08:16):
for sure, they'd be super said. But if there was
like a one really bad parent and the other parent
thought maybe the only way out was to to approve
emancipation or whatever could be, that'd be a messy legal
case right there. It really would because when you go
to um, go in front of the judge, there's a
lot of things that they're they're considering here, right, Yeah.

(08:39):
They first of all, they're like, why do you want
to be emancipated? And just to say like my parents
suck l O L is not going to work. Like
there's some legal reasons that you have to have, Like
the judge would say, they all suck. I'm sorry, right, like, um,
neglect or abuse or abandonment, all that kind of stuff.
UM or you know, I I have a career and

(09:00):
I need to be able to enter contracts my own
or whatever. Um. And based on the set of legal reasons,
the thing will proceed forward. And the court's going to
take a bunch of different stuff into consideration, like, um,
what your age is, how mature you are? Um? What
what what your health is? Like? Uh so, because I mean,

(09:21):
if you have like a if you need to support,
say like with mental health, They're probably not going to
emancipate you unless you can prove that you're going to
be able to take care of this on your own. Um,
they're gonna look at your parents and how your parents
have behaved to right, sure, Um, I wonder how much
of this, Like when does law enforcement get involved if

(09:41):
it's like cases of abuse, Like, surely that comes into
play too, right, I don't know. I would think that,
especially if you're under the age of even possibly emancipating yourself,
that you're just you just become a ward of the
state in those cases. It's so sad. Uh, they're gonna
look obviously just if you can support yourself. Um, if

(10:02):
you like the maturity thing that comes into play into
play there, like can you go out and find a
job and get an apartment on your own? Like is
this even possible? Or you know, I guess there are
plenty situations where you go live with another family member
or a friend or something like that. It's not like
you have to go out and get a mortgage or
something like that. No, But I mean imagine being a

(10:24):
sixteen year old and you're like I'm out on my
own now, and I've got to work and pay for
an apartment and go to school because again, remember you
can't drop out of high school. But there's another twist
all this, there's another caveat Chuck. A lot of states
have labor laws, child labor laws, So you might become
emancipated or go to become emancipated and find out you
can't be because you can't legally support yourself. Yeah, and

(10:47):
that's um. In the cases of the child actors, it's
not like that's the way they can skirt like um
now all of a sudden, they can just all the
labor laws is of an adult applies to them. That's
not true at all. They still have the child labor
laws that they have to all. Uh. They still have
to have schooling, even if it's a fancy schmancy tutor.
It's like driving you towards the g E d um.

(11:09):
But you know, you have to as a kid, like,
you have to have some means of supporting yourself and
also consider that you're you're still a kid that's gonna
want to do kids stuff, and like, there's just so much.
It's just devastating to think that this might be a
kid's only way out just to forego essentially a childhood

(11:31):
to emancipate themselves. Yeah, the whole thing is super interesting,
like on the surface, but yeah, if you dig into
it like you did, it becomes super depressing all of
a sudden, choosing this topic. Sorry about that, Um, you
got anything else? I got nothing else? All right, Well
I'm bummed out and Chuck's got nothing else, so short

(11:52):
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