Legal Question in Business Law in New York

Re: Legal age of majority

Your daughter is legally competent to contract; so any deal you can get with the store will be her good luck. Frankly, all students need a laptop in college these days.

Re: Legal age of majority

Your daughter is over 18; in New York, that means that she can sign contracts, obtain credit, vote, go to war. She can't yet drink (when she's 21 she'll be able to do that). Unless your daughter has some disability that renders her incompetent in a way that a court will recognize at an incompetency hearing, there's not a dingblazed thing you can do about what contracts she signs except talk with her about what credit is and how it can muck you up before she signs the agreement (too late...). She is legally an adult, with all the rights, privileges and responsibilites that come with that status.

Unfortunately, computers generally come with a contract that, by its terms, makes returning an opened computer (and certainly opened software) very difficult. This is the protection for intellectual property that the computer and software manufacturers have in place.

There is probably nothing your daughter (you are not involved in this transaction) can do about the restocking fee if she opened the computer box, and opened software means the software license has kicked in, so there's not much she can do about the refusal to take that back.

Your daughter has an opportunity here to learn to behave like the adult she is. She should keep the computer and pay the credit card bill HERSELF (don't you pay it; she, along with most other kids her age, needs to learn a sharp lesson in credit and money management). Have her sit down with you to figure out just how she will pay this bill off (this might entail her getting a job; work-study IS quite doable, and it gives its participants great life skills). She will pay interest. She will not like it. Tough.

This is not an unusual situation for a kid to find themselves in; credit is very easily available, and is very, very painful to get out of. I see lots of bankruptcy cases with young people where mom and dad did not teach the kid how to handle money or warn them that credit is valuable but dangerous and easy to drown in.

Your daughter needs to learn to act like a grown-up, Parent, and this is a great way for her to do that. You need to back off and let her learn.

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