In the USA, do parents have the right to control their children&#39;s possessions? Let's say a minor (17 or younger) living with his parents gets a job or does chores, and with the money thereby earned, buys a video game console. The parents decide that the console is not appropriate for the child and take it away. In fact, they sell it and put the money into their own bank account, with no plans to ever give it back to the child. Setting aside any question of ethics or morality, is this legal on the part of the parents? If the police are called in, will they seek to charge the parents with a crime (such as theft)? I am under the impression that there is no legal case here, as the parents are the custodians/guardians of everything for the child. Imagine a situation where the parents are very poor, and ongoingly need the fruits of their child's labor to simply put food on the table and pay for the electricity. In my mind, while parents should generally allow their children to own possessions and enjoy the fruits of their labor, they also have every right to take every last penny from their child if it is urgently needed for the basic good of the whole family. When considering this situation, perhaps it would be easier for you to think of the purchased item as something most would agree is unhealthful for the child, though not necessarily illegal for him to possess—say, a book on how to construct a bomb or on how to commit suicide. Perhaps it is a chain saw, or a gun, or a set of lawn darts, or pornography, or anything else that most/many people would recognize is good for parents to take away from their minor children, no matter where the money came from or what previous recognition there was in the family of the item's belonging to the child. In this way, please try to avoid responding from any distaste about the parents violating your personal feelings about a child's rights, as this question is specifically about the law only. I'd like to know if my impression here stands at odds with any laws or precedents that could inform me better. If a more specific jurisdiction is needed, let's hear answers from Washington state, California, Florida, and Maine. Or chime in with a few other states, so we can get an idea of what the laws are throughout the nation. Feel free to add information on laws in other countries, as well, but please try to answer the USA question first.
The fundamental question is whether children can own property: they clearly can. See Cyclopedia of Law and Procedure (I improved the link so it can be more easily read). As a general rule any property acquired by the child in any way except by its own labor or services belongs to the child, and not to the parent McClosky v. Cyphert, 3 Casey (27 Pa.) 220 The right of an infant to be the owner of property is as clear and as well protected as that of a person who has arrived at full age. When anything is given to an infant to be held by him in his own right, he has the title to it, and the parent, guardian or master has in law no more right to take it (for any purpose beyond safekeeping) than a stranger. Wheeler v. R. Co., 31 Kan. 640, 3 P. 297, 300: As a matter of law a minor may own property the same as any other person. He may obtain it by inheritance, by gift, or by purchase; and there is nothing in the law that would prevent even a father from giving property to his minor child. A father may also so emancipate his minor child as to entitle him to receive his own wages. It is probably true that where a minor child lives with his father, and is supported by him, all things given to the child in the way of support, such as clothing, for instance, would still belong to the father and not to the child. But things given by the father to the child, not in the way of support, but with the understanding that they should become the property of the child, would, undoubtedly, become the property of the child. Banks v. Conant, 14 Allen 497, the father has no title to the property of the child, nor is the capacity or right of the latter to take property or receive money by grant, gift or otherwise, except as a compensation for services, in any degree qualified or limited during minority. Whatever therefore an infant acquires which does not come to him as a compensation for services rendered, belongs absolutely to him, and his father cannot interpose any claim to it, either as against the child, or as against third persons who claim title or possession from or under the infant. However, a parent does have the right to prevent their child from using or acquiring a computer, car (also prohibited statutorily in Washington), television, cell phone; they can also prevent a child from spending their savings. Parents do retain their property right in things that they give to their children for general support and maintenance, such as a pair of shoes, or books. There can also be specific statutes such as the Uniform Transfers to Minors Act (Washington version) which partially recognize this right, making it easy for a person to transfer property to a minor, where the property is in the care of a custodian, but not owned by the custodian.
Either party can petition the appropriate court for an adjudication of paternity (if this has not already been established in connection with the issuance of the birth certificate), and for a parental responsibility and child support order, at any time, if no such order is in place (assuming that Pennsylvania is the "home state" of the child and venue is proper). Child custody and visitation rights are determined based upon the "best interests of the child" with very little other formal guidance from the statute or even case law which also affords a judge very broad, although not unlimited discretion in resolving the issue if the parents don't reach an agreement. Any parent who is not adjudicated to be "unfit" (whose parental rights would then be terminated), is entitled to some reasonable visitation under the circumstances at a minimum. In practice, courts tend to prefer to enter an order that preserves the pre-litigation status quo is one was established for any reasonable length of time. Once a custody and visitation schedule are established (logically, this is actually done contemporaneously), a child support award is also entered based upon the number of nights per year that the child spends with each parent, the income of each parent, and the extraordinary expenses, if any of the child, pursuant to guidelines that exist under state law but are federally mandated. Generally speaking, child support payments are quite small relative to the incomes of the parties. If a parent is willfully refusing to work or underemployed so as to reduce child support, in some circumstances, income that could have been earned is imputed to that parent for purposes of determining the appropriate amount of child support. There is a small body of civil procedure that goes to the nitty gritty of how this is handled after a petition is filed, but that really goes beyond the scope of the question. In the simplest case, only the two parents are involved in the litigation. But, there are circumstances in which there can be other parties. For example, if the child has been supported by welfare, a representative of the state is a party to make sure that child support is paid reducing the need for welfare payments or repaying welfare payments already made by the state. Guardians of an un-empancipated minor or disabled parent might participate. Grandparents can sometimes have standing to participate. A non-parent who has physical custody of the child would usually have standing to participate. This all gets a little technical, and since the question doesn't suggest any facts that would call for additional parties, I will leave it at that. In the event of a substantial change of circumstances after a statutory period after the last order was entered, a court may start over, more or less from scratch, and establish a modified child custody, visitation and child support order that reflects the changed circumstances. As a practical matter, for parents who are separated from shortly after the birth of a child and can't work things out between themselves, there will probably be several to half a dozen modification proceedings until the child is an adult.
Theft is universally a crime in virtually every jurisdiction. Insofar as a state has a criminal code and a functioning judiciary, theft will always be a crime. It is also a basic legal principle that theft is a tort as well (in other words, a civil wrong incurring damages to an individual that can be remedied in a court of law). A key part of the problem in failing to make theft a crime, is that in the absence of a substantive penalty in terms of a fine or imprisonment, theft becomes a low-risk, high-reward activity where the maximum penalty is simply the repayment of stolen goods (with relatively minimal loss). This fails to provide an effective deterrent to this socially frowned-upon activity, and rates of crime would skyrocket. It is appropriate, therefore, to make theft a crime (and all jurisdictions do so), as all pillars of criminal justice immediately apply. Edit: As @/JBentley correctly points out, penalties do in fact exist in civil law. That said, the power of incarceration, perhaps in this case the ultimate deterrent, is largely unavailable in civil cases. The ultimate point - that theft is rendered a more sound and legitimate enterprise based largely on gambling - remains the same. Additionally, not all individuals have the time or effort to file small claims and follow cases to the end. Making theft a tort-only offense would cause extraordinary difficulties in enforcement as many would consider the loss of perhaps a small article relatively insignificant compared to filing in small claims court.
It is illegal to sell alcohol to a minor in Washington (RCW 66.44.270). The seller can get into various kinds of trouble, including losing their license, under liquor board regulations. However, as long as the establishment follows the rules for acceptable ID, they escape liability if in fact they sell alcohol to a minor: the license holder is legally allowed to accept an identification of the specific type. That is the sense in which this is required by law: the customer must have actually presented the identification, in order for the establishment to escape liability (RCW 66.20.210). Looking old enough is not the issue. It is legal to sell alcohol to a person who is over 21, and the law does not require presentation of identification as a condition for a sale. However, under RCW 66.20.180 a person is require to produce ID "upon request of any licensee, peace officer, or enforcement officer of the board". The legal risk attached to sales in an age-marginal situation is very high, and actual presentation of ID is required to escape liability by the establishment, so in that sense, it is "required by law". All requests to produce ID for liquor sales (at least in Washington, and leaving out deliveries which are governed by other laws) are driven by company policy. Typical policies are quite rational, being designed to protect the company's interest in not getting into a heap of trouble for an under-age sale. There is no law saying when you must ask, or when you are protected if you don't ask. Usually, store policy is to use "common sense" so that 90 year olds are not required to produce ID (they may be asked, jokingly). Non-compliance with RCW 66.20.180 carries no legal penalty, that is, there is nothing in the statute that says "if the customer doesn't...". The most obvious would be that the seller would refuse to sell, which the seller can arbitrarily do anyhow. There is no statutory penalty imposed on a licensee if they request ID of a person over 21 and the person fails / refuses to produce the ID. Obviously, the licensee cannot be punished if a customer fails to provide ID (and leaves), especially if they lost it. But the law "requires" them to provide an ID, with ne except "unless you leave / put the bottle back". Somewhat less obviously, if the legislature wants to, it can enact a provision that once a licensee requests ID, they are forbidden to sell alcohol to that customer until ID is provided. But there currently is no such law. "The law" also included regulations, such as WAC 314-17-105. This regulation is a chart, and the relevant entry is PERMIT: Failure to produce permit or identification upon request. See RCW 66.20.310 and 66.20.180. for which the 1st offense consequence is "5-day permit suspension OR $100 monetary option". This is a problematic regulation (potential lawsuit fodder), since it can be interpreted in a number of ways. The question is, of whom is the permit or identification predicated? Only the licensee has a permit, but customers and employees can both have identification. If we interpret this regulation as meaning "Failure by licensee or customer", then we arrive at the absurd conclusion that if a customer fails to produce ID on request, the establishment is fined. It is important to note that this regulation is under a chapter about server training, thus the regulation can only reasonably be interpreted as being about licensee providing identification.
It is not illegal to view pornography. It is illegal to possess or receive certain kinds of pornography, namely child porn, under 18 USC 2252 and 18 USC 2252a (there is a subtle legal difference between "child pornography" and "visual depiction (which) involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct"). In order to view anything on the internet, you have to first receive it, so there is potential criminal liability. These sections allows one affirmative defense, if one knowingly possesses, or knowingly accesses with intent to view, any book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, computer disk, or any other material that contains an image of child pornography that has been mailed, or shipped or transported using any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce or in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer, or that was produced using materials that have been mailed, or shipped or transported in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer; but also (1) possessed less than three images of child pornography; and (2) promptly and in good faith, and without retaining or allowing any person, other than a law enforcement agency, to access any image or copy thereof— (A) took reasonable steps to destroy each such image; or (B) reported the matter to a law enforcement agency and afforded that agency access to each such image. A person's belief that the website was moderated is not a defense. There are also state statutes, typically stronger, which outlaw possession of child porn. Crabtree v. Kentucky is an example of such a (successful) conviction. The court addresses the question of whether "merely viewing" can constitute actual possession: the court found that it did: Crabtree urges us to consider that his merely viewing child pornography images before deleting them should not be deemed to constitute actual possession. After reviewing the facts of this case, we are not persuaded that this is a valid argument in light of the Ninth Circuit's definition of possession in Romm, supra: that the act of seeking out child pornography and exercising control over it constitutes criminal possession—regardless of whether it is downloaded. Crabtree admitted to seeking out the material and to having it on his computer. It would be impractical to try to review 50 states' worth of child porn laws plus the federal statute, but there is also a “Temporary innocent possession” defense, which is conceivably applicable to the situation where you click a link and surprise! In the above case, defendant had to click a link that indicated the nature of the contents, and had to confirm file-saving of a file whose name was indicative of its content. Such circumstances overrule the presumption of temporary innocent possession. A question raised in the comments is whether a porn-ambush could lead to a conviction. Suppose that a web page has a number of embedded child-porn images which are saved to a user's computer without his knowledge. As pointed out in this report of the US Sentencing Commission, A conviction for receipt, however, requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant knowingly came into possession of child pornography at the time that the image or video was received with case law citations. The case of US v. Kuchinski, 469 F. 3d 853 is instructive, because defendant did knowingly seek out and download a number of child porn images, and was convicted. In 94 of those cases, he knew he was receiving child pornography; in over 10,000 other cases, such images were found in his system cache (this is relevant to sentencing). The court found that it matters that "Kuchinski had no knowledge of the images that were simply in the cache files", and the court concluded, in K's favor, that Where a defendant lacks knowledge about the cache files, and concomitantly lacks access to and control over those files, it is not proper to charge him with possession and control of the child pornography images located in those files, without some other indication of dominion and control over the images. To do so turns abysmal ignorance into knowledge and a less than valetudinarian grasp into dominion and control. Do you know about the system cache, and do you know how to control it? If not, you might avoid the charge. In other words, it depends on the circumstances surrounding the possession and the evidence of a knowing act, as well as the jurisdiction.
The notification that you saw is not useful legal information for you: stuff always belongs to whoever owns the stuff. It might be interpreted as saying "it doesn't belong to us", but you can't count on that (it's virtually guaranteed that at least some of the content there is owned by the website owner). A more informative statement would be "You will have to get permission from the content owner to copy their stuff", and "We're not going to spend time figuring out who owns what". You could read the terms of service (try this with Stack Exchange) to see what the site tells people. The TOS here says that if you contribute anything, it "is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license". You can then look up what that license says and learn what that allows. Websites are kind of tricky, though, because it's not hard to change the wording of a TOS, and you need to know what specific TOS was promulgated at the time a particular contribution was unleashed. Usual practice is to think it through carefully and not frequently tweak the TOS, but it's not illegal to change the TOS. Note that copyright law does not prohibit you from using other people's stuff, it prohibits you from copying. The distinction is clearer when you see a post that explains an algorithm with actual code, you read and learn and make use of that, but write your own code. As a user out there, if there isn't a clear indication that stuff posted is there for the taking, under some public license (as is the case with SE), then getting specific permission to copy, from the owner of the content (possibly untraceable), would be necessary. Now assume that you're a moderator or site-owner of some forum: presumably (hopefully) you have a TOS that addresses that situation, which says that moderators have the right to edit or delete content at their sole discretion, and also you say what kinds of posts are prohibited. Such an statement is not absolutely mandatory for all things, but it may be necessary to avoid litigation over some acts. One one end of the spectrum, it would be illegal for a forum to host child porn, stolen credit card numbers, or protected digital content. If a user were to post such stuff, the site would need to eliminate that stuff, and the poster could not legally rely on an argument of the type "That's my stuff, you have no right to mess with it". On the other hand, if a forum actually requires paid membership, then there may be a strong contractual expectation that the user is getting something of value, so you would have to watch for statements that could be interpreted as broad permission to put stuff out there without any interference. (For instance, a file-hosting service would have only minimal restrictions on content, aimed at protecting their own legal interests; whereas a political-advocacy site would have maximal interest in prohibiting the expression of views counter to the cause). Thus the SE TOS has you "grant Stack Exchange the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to use, copy, cache, publish, display, distribute, modify, create derivative works", which allows moderators to correct typos, delete offensive wording, and obliterate entire posts. If a site fails to have any such clauses in their TOS, then it might be a matter that has to be settled in court, whether they have the right to eliminate "spam" (i.e. advertising for a service, especially if the reason for getting an account was to provide an advertising platform). In light of the limited use sanctioned by the TOS, per the below comment, legal copying will be quite limited. However, "fair use" a situation where copying is allowed, regardless of what the TOS may say. (You could be banned from the site, but you could not be sued for infringement). Fair use was invented precisely so that people could make comments like "Jones advocates an absurd law, saying '...[quote from Jones]...'". Thus you can comment on a post and quote the relevant part ("The lines '[... quoting the code ...]' results in an infinite loop"). See the Fair Use FAQ for more details.
These types of situations can, do and will get very messy and bitter fast. The key question here is actually two basic areas: What’s the legal situation now in terms of what you can actually claim etc? For this you need a lawyer familiar with the local laws. Second, and much more important, is how much you value your relationship with your sister. These types of situations can and do irreparably break families, and you need to think very hard about this element of the situation regardless of what your legal rights are. Personally I would err towards probing gently into what she thinks is fair/your mother intended etc and go from there, with the emphasis on extreme caution. Money can always be replaced. Families can’t.
In general As Dale M explained, if you give the money to someone who is not obviously authorized by the business to accept money and sell stuff in exchange, you have not entered into a valid sales contract. That means you are taking things without permission. Therefore the shop could sue you for any damage this causes (maybe you took something the shop did not want to sell, or the person at the information desk was not an employee and ran away with the money). However, whether this constitutes a crime such as theft will depend on jurisdictions. Germany In Germany, for example, it would probably not, because by definition a theft requires "intention to take posession in violation of the law" (StGB §242). You could argue that you did not intend to violate the law, because you paid the required amount, and only gave the money to the wrong person by mistake. Of course, I cannot guarantee that will convince the judge... England and Wales Similarly, the law in England and Wales defines "theft" in section 1 of the Theft Act 1968: A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; [...] Furthermore, section 2 says: A person’s appropriation of property belonging to another is not to be regarded as dishonest— [...] (b) if he appropriates the property in the belief that he would have the other’s consent if the other knew of the appropriation and the circumstances of it; or [...] So, similar to the situation in Germany, you could argue in court that you intended to buy the item legally, and believed that the shop would be okay with that.