Legal Question in Family Law in New York

Re: minor emancipation

More responses by other attorneys and additional points of view might be helpful in this issue since there does not seem to be a definitive answer to this question of minimum age for emancipation as I will discuss below.

Nvertheless, even disregarding the issue of minimum age, your child would NOT qualify for emancipation because she is NOT self-supporting which will generally be sufficient ground to dsiqualify a minor from emancipation.

With regard to the issue of minimum age: One attorney wrote in a legal article that the minimum age for emancipation of a minor is seventeen or older; anoother opined that the minimum age is sixteen or over. I found nothing to indicate that a child below sixteen years of age can be emancipated in New York which would suggest, if not prove, that fourteen is too young for emancipation. However, the reason for the lack of definitive response in this matter is that child emancipation below the age of twenty one is not actually provided by statute in New York but is instead the product of court decisional case law and at any time, even if it has not already happened, a New York court could set a new decisional precedent for emancipating a minor at a younger age than sixteen.

Generally in order to qualify for emancipation below the age of 21, the child must either:

(1) Be serving in the military (and one research source I consulted maintained that employment as a police officer could also qualify a minor for emancipation); or,

(2) be married; or,

(3) refuse to obey the parents' reasonable rules and leave the parents' residence.

Moreover, if the ground for emancipation is as listed in (3), the child's refusal to obey rules, then emancipation will still NOT happen if the parents themselves are at fault, i.e., if this breakdown in the parental/child relationship was caused by the parents, and/or if the parents themselves are unwilling to accept and fulfill their parental obligations and responsibilities.

Re: minor emancipation

More responses by other attorneys and additional points of view might be helpful in this issue since there does not seem to be a definitive answer to this question of minimum age for emancipation as i will discuss below.

Nvertheless, even disregarding the issue of minimum age, your child would NOT qualify for emancipation because she is NOT self-supporting which will generally be sufficient ground to dsiqualify a minor from emancipation.

With regard to the issue of minimum age: One attorney wrote in a legal article that the minimum age for emancipation of a minor is seventeen or older; anoother opined that the minimum age is sixteen or over. I found nothing to indicate that a child below sixteen years of age can be emancipated in New York which would suggest, if not prove, that fourteen is too young for emancipation. However, the reason for the lack of definitive response in this matter is that child emancipation below the age of twenty one is not actually provided by statue in New York but is instead the product of court decisional case law and at any time, even if it has not already happened, a New York court could set a new decisional precedent for emancipating a minor at a younger age than sixteen.

Generallly in order to qualify for emancipation below the age of 21, the child must

either be:

(1) Serving in the military (and one research source I consulted maintained that employment as a police officer could also qualify a minor for emancipation); or,

(2) married; or,

(3) refuse to obey the parents' reasonable rules and leaves the parents' residence.

Moreover, if the ground for emancipation is as listed in (3), the child's refusal to obey rules, then emancipation will still NOT happen if the parents themselves are at fault, i.e., if this breakdown in the parental/child relationship was caused by the parents, and/or if the parents themselves are unwilling to accept and fulfill their parental obligations and responsibilities.