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The legal term for the process is "emancipation," so we searched Yahoo! using the words "emancipation minor," which led us to Michigan's Calhoun County Courts homepage. This helpful site offers a section on Juvenile Matters and Emancipation, including a reminder that "the laws concerning emancipation of a minor differ from state to state." That prompted us to return to Yahoo! and search on "US state law," which helped us locate the U.S. States > Law category. After scrolling past listings for each of the fifty states, we selected the Legal Information Institute's State Law Collection. There we noticed a module offering a choice of "ways to access material" and we clicked on the topical index option. Again we scrolled and under the header "Family Law" we found what we were hoping for, a link to Emancipation of Children. Since you're from Illinois, we clicked on that link first. We found the full text of the Illinois statute called the Emancipation of Mature Minors Act: The purpose of this Act is to provide a means by which a mature minor who has
demonstrated the ability and capacity to manage his own affairs and to live wholly or partially independent of his parents or guardian, may obtain the legal status of an emancipated person with power to enter into valid legal contracts. We learned that a "mature minor" must be between 16 and 18 years old. A document from the State Bar of California taught us that in most states minors do not have the right to "divorce" themselves from their parents or emancipate themselves without the permission of parents or legal guardian. The definition of emancipation from Nolo's
Law Dictionary suggests that sometimes it "occurs when the child's parents no longer perform their parental duties and surrender their rights to the care, custody and earnings of their minor child." After that, you're on your own. Literally.
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