Hello everyone. I’m planning on filing for emancipation soon, and I was hoping that someone can answer a few of my questions. I’ve looked on the internet, but I haven’t found any clear answers. This is kind of long, but I’m wondering of anyone thinks that I’m eligible for emancipation.
I’m a girl, and I just turned sixteen on the Nov. 14th. I recently was signed out of school, so I can take my GED and apply for culinary school. I have friends who go to the culinary school I would like to attend. I am currently take the pretest at the library, and plan on taking the actually GED in a few weeks. I’m an avid learner, I speak fluent Italian, Sicilian, Hebrew, Spanish, and French. So, I’m not one of those kids who dropped out just to get school over with. I Also have a job as a cashier, and recently just got a raise, and added two hours to my shift (I woke eight hours a day). My job pays $200 a week.
I would like to get emancipated and move out for the reasons following:
I live with my mother, her boyfriend, and my grandmother in my grandmother’s house. My parents are legally separated (my mother married my father while he was in jail for possession and distribution of schedule II narcotics) and they have never lived together. I only receive $46.15 in child support, and half the time it’s hardly ever over $35.10 a week (two weeks ago I only received $18.02). Just on the 25th of this month, my father was, again, arrested in a drug raid, along with about fifteen other people. I found out about this in the newspapers. He was charged with possession, distribution, and intent to distribute Crack Cocaine, Hydrocodone, Oxycotton, and Marijuana. My father could care less about me.
His side of the family are thieves, drug addicts and peddlers. I have a half brother who is ten, and his mother told my grandmother that while her and my brother lived in Myrtle Beach, SC. (my father lived with her and my brother until my brother was five, when she threw him out for drugs) that my father’s mother pimped my cousins (my father’s brother’s daughters) who were thirteen and fifteen at the time, and used them to take drugs to the people they were selling to.
My mother is forty and her boyfriend is thirty-six. My mother lives scott-free of my grandmother (her mother) who just turned sixty on Nov. 4th. My mother works at the local bar for $80 dollars a week, she doesn’t pay a single bill, buy groceries, nothing. Her boyfriend basically lays in the bed all day, because he’s an epileptic (although, I’ve never seen him have a seizure in the day time or night). He doesn’t contribute anything either. My grandmother works as a cake decorator at a local grocery store. She only gets about 36 hours a week because she was cut back. She pays all the bills (the house payment is $560 a month, and the water/light bill is usually no less than $300 a month), buys all the groceries, everything.
My mother is always asking me for money and says she will pay me back when she gets paid. I never see it, and she does the same thing to my grandmother. My mother and her boyfriend stay out all hours of the night, at the bar with their “friends,” sometimes until two in the morning or later. When they are at home, they both lay in bed all day, only getting up to fix themselves food, or to leave and go out with their friends. When they do fix their food, and get done, they bring their dishes down to the kitchen and just lay them in the sink.
My mother never spends any time with me, and half the time she is in a bad mood. I get called “retarded,” a “b*tch,” dumba*s,“ ”whore.” and cursed at on regular basis… so, it’s not physical abuse as much as it is mental. Although, she has punched me, knocked me down, threw pots, pans, ect, at me, and hit my head against the wall on a few occasions when she’s mad.
My mother gets mad easily, and most of the time over nothing, and throws things, food, ashtrays, ect.. against the wall. Half the time, my mother has her cell phone stuck in her ear, or she’s texting. Her boyfriends is just like a small child. And she acts no better than a ditsy teenage girl.
My grandmother will not put them out because she doesn’t want to see my mother living on the street. Which, by the way her and her boyfriend does, they would be. Frankly, I don’t want to see it either, but I do thinks it’s due time my mother and her boyfriend grew up. I love my mother because she’s my mother (although, not a good one), I just don’t like her as a person.
My grandfather was a retired police deputy. He was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1996. He died four years ago. He got to the point where he couldn’t get out of his wheelchair and was bed ridden and catheterized all the time. It was up to me and my grandmother to take care of him. That included feeding him, changing his diaper, ect. I didn’t mind doing it because he was my grandfather (my step-grandfather actually; the only one I ever knew as my grandfather). My mother didn’t help u
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My mother didn’t help us with him or anything.
Quite honestly, I’m tired of my mother doing me and my grandmother this way. I’m tired of her throwing things when she’s mad, and cursing at me any chance she gets. She cares more about herself and her friends than her daughter and mother. I’m tired of seeing everything put on my grandmother and my mother not helping. I know that my mother and her boyfriend aren’t going to get a stable job and place of their own to live, and that’s why I want to move out.
I’ve always had to take care of myself since my mother was/is always out, my grandmother worked/works all the time, and my grandfather was sick, so I’m mature for my age. I do like having to ask my grandmother to do or buy things for me.
If I can’t afford something I want, I save or don’t get it, and I pay my $90 a month cell phone bill. I always look to see what store has the best price on whatever it is I need or want. Currently, I have $5,000 saved in the bank so I can buy
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my own car, which I plan to do very soon. I usually keep no less than $300 dollars in cash to cover expenses. I sit down once about ever week and a half and figure up my money. How much goes to this and that, and how much I will have left, so I can make sure I will have enough money.
I have three close friends, Mark, Josh, and Gage, who are twenty-three, twenty-one, and twenty (I’ve always found it easier to get along with people older than myself). They’re my friends that go to the culinary school. They have their own apartments, cars, jobs, ect. So, I have people to ask for advice and help me along the process of renting an apartment and such, and ask for advice along the way.
I’m looking to see if other people think that I have a good chance at getting a judge to grant my emancipation? And, also, if I do get emancipated, what kind of jobs can I work? Like, would I be able to work in a deli, or get a job at a restaurant or somewhere that normally hire people eighteen or
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older? And can I get a drivers’ license, (I think it’s a Class D?) and not just learners’ permit? I’m not so much wondering about the drivers’ license as I am about what kind of jobs I’ll be eligible for.
Any thoughts, advice, or even personal experience I would greatly appreciate. Thank you!
I have thought about utilities, cable/internet, car insurance, gas, and extra spending money. I have also sat down and looked a what different companies rates are.
From what I’ve figured up, my $800 a month from me job, plus, what I have saved in the bank, other than the $5000 I’m going to use to buy a car with, I’m %99.999 percent sure that I could like on my own and not have any real money problems.
I have also just talked to my friend Mark. There’s openings in his apartment complex. The apartments are either two bedroom or four. Two bedrooms go for $333 a month.
As I said, the money I have saved, money from my job, and the money I put away from my check, I would be able to cover rent, along with utilities and other necessities.