Short Stuff: Divorcing Your Parents

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 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? 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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.

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 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 stuff Away. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio from our podcasts My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H m hm