The Glade 4.0

Well yeah, the lawsuit is what makes it different. The fact is this lawyer agreed to take this case pro bono despite knowing the odds of getting paid and profiting were basically nil.

That, combined with the Catholic private school, no discipline/academic problem history, the revelation that the plan was for her to live at home and go to college, (as opposed to living in a dorm) and the fact that the boyfriend is the issue leads me to the conclusion that the "bad influence" was "he exists and wants to have sex with you" and "reconsider the relationship" was "you can't have a boyfriend because you're not having sex until marriage." The curfew and live at home are so they can keep her away from sexual activity.

So, the whole thing is tragic. While the lawsuit is ridiculous, this girl is going to end up pregnant within a year. Either to get on the dole, trap some naïve guy into providing for her, or after she gives into her hormones under those restrictions and screws some guy in the back of a Volkswagen.

Actually I was thinking dad might have hurled her hard enough that she clears the pool completely... or at least hits the opposite ledge.

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In some states, divorced parents are on the hook for child support past the age of 18 if their kids go to college.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Some, but if they're like Missouri, there are conditions. The kid has to perform, there has to be contiguous attendance, and the college costs need to be reasonable (like, regular state college costs). Even then it's iffy, since the kid is an adult now and really has to represent themselves in court - Mom can take Dad to court, but without the kid stepping up and taking sides, Mom's not going to win. Been there, got the t-shirt.



I'm thinking she's too self centered. It's all about "her", she's not going to want to be put in a position where she has to consider another human.

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In time, this too shall pass.

He demanded legal fees from the target of the suit. That's contingency, not pro bono.



Some truth here, but almost certainly there was more to it than sex, especially since atending a catholic school, especially for wealthier people, in no way is a guarantee of being catholic. The schools are often simply a less expensive alternative to even more upscale private schools, but better than public. The attitude of "we don't want you to have a boyfriend" usually has a lot more to it than just "no sex". Boyfriends (or girlfriends, for that matter, for boys in this situation) are often perceived as "not focusing on what's important" and "spending too much time" even if there's no sexual activity involved. Some parents think high school and college are just supposed to be all work and activities all the time and any serious social life is a "distraction". In some cases that's actually true; but in others its just the parents worrying too much about success.

In some cases people even do this to themselves. Some kids get so focused on success that they essentially ignore dating and socializing until late in college or even after. Sometimes this doesn't end well because when they all of a sudden don't have school to focus on and need to fill that time with social activities they discover what they've been missing and it takes over.



No, she is not going to end up pregnant within a year. There's always that risk, but it's not really highly likely. Contrary to what you like to comfort yourself with, trying to get kids to avoid poor sexual decisions (even done ham-handedly) is not some guarantee they will make those decisions. She lives in Chicago; I'm quite certain even with a Catholic education she knows what a condom is and how to use it. Amazing as it may seem, even many teenage boys know this and will use them because most teenage boys know very well they can end up on the hook for child support.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think the problem with the boyfriend is that he got suspended from school and shortly thereafter this honor student did too.

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No, it's not. Don't be dramatic. It's about her feeling spoiled and entitled towards her parents, probably getting egged on by another adult, and also perfectly reasonably imposing her conditions, as an adult, on her parents' assistance.

If parents want adult children to accept assistance rather than make poor choices (or even choices that will just be very hard, like enlisting) the parents have to negotiate. That's all there is to it. If you go "my way or the highway", and the kid picks "highway" and you don't like that, it's YOUR fault for not negotiating. The fact that the lawsuit was spoiled and entitled does not change the fact that there is plenty of room to question the parent's "rules", given that they mostly seem like "we need to supervise you because we don't trust you despite your good performance, and you're not allowed to talk back."

It's easier to understand if we imagine a kid that's only partially dependent on their parents. My daughter is in that situation. She has an apartment, pays her own rent, and works 34 hours a week. She also, however, gets money from us and we take parent loans for part of her tuition, pay whatever balance is left after financial aid, send her some extra money to supplement her income, and may have to have her move home for the summer if her roommate leaves since she won't be able to afford the place on her own.

That does not give us the right to dictate how she will conduct herself just because we help her out and act as a safety net. She is taking as much responsibility for herself as she is able, and when she decided to move out of the dorms and get a job, that was the condition. I tell her what she should do in a lot of situations, and explain why she should take that course of action so she'll understand the potential consequences that she lacks the experience to know about, but as long as it isn't going to have unreasonable financial consequences for the rest of the family, she makes her own decisions. Our provision of some of her support does not translate to "therefore we get to dictate to you".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Possibly. I got suspended from school in 10th Grade for fighting on the same day I got on the honor roll. Getting in trouble occasionally is a good thing for kids as long as it's not too serious. Especially for an honor student. You have to learn that minor punishments for minor offenses are not the end of the world.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You say tomato, I say tomato. Any drama is in your rear-view mirror, and is closer than it appears.



Oh, it absolutely does, unless you're an idiot. You're paying for that right. Someone's gotta put in the effort to earn the bucks, and if it's you, you get to dictate what is done with it.

A parent should (in my opinion) dictate GPA as part of continued tuition support, marital status, kids, etc. For instance, I pay 1/2 for "C's" or better, and 100% for "A's". Get married or have kids and you're on your own. I do this 'cause if you're single and going to school, school is the most important responsibility you have. School is much farther down on the list when married or have kids. It's not my responsibility to help you meet your adult responsibilities, and since they ARE responsibilities, you need to learn whatever you need to learn to meet them without help, since help isn't always there.

Bottom line - It's your money, do with it as you will. I don't give mine away to my kids unconditionally.

I treat my adult kids pretty much as the world will treat them, and consider it a disservice to them to do otherwise.

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In time, this too shall pass.

No it's not. Contingency is when you get a percentage of any possible settlement in exchange for not charging the plaintiff legal fees. Whether or not he demanded legal fees from the target of the suit doesn't change the fact that he represented this girl at no cost to her. It's possible he did so on contingency rather than pro bono but there's no information to indicate which. Regardless, as a lawyer he had to know that the chance of actually collecting damages was remote and the odds of forcing the parents to pay his legal fees was basically nonexistent. You only have to pay the opposition's legal fees if you act in severe bad faith.

He agreed to take this case despite knowing it was a near-certainty that he wouldn't get paid a dime, and he put $12,000 worth of his own time and money towards the case. That leads me to believe that we either don't have the whole story or that the proposed conditions were especially idiotic, otherwise why would he feel passionate enough about it to work for free?

Or he is grossly exaggerating/overstating the cost of his time in the hopes that he gets something.

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I don't think you can do that when you ask for legal fees. When you ask for damages you can go wild with quantifying stuff like "lost potential" and "pain and suffering" and go ahead and demand $10 million for a minor car accident, but legal fees are pretty laid down and quantifiable.

Legal fees are hourly and set by the lawyer. Fortune 500 investment lawyer doesn't charge the same fee as Call Saul.

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Well, yeah. But neither of them can just add two zeroes to the price for the same service from one plaintiff to the next.

Says who?
http://research.lawyers.com/how-and-how ... harge.html

Mr. Lawyer who is sending his daughter to what is at least a $10k per year private Catholic High School probably isn't charging $50 an hour for his services regardless of the case.

Edit after digging, Mr. Lawyer's daughter's tuition is... $12,850 per year.
http://www.morriscatholic.org/admission ... index.aspx

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It seems to me that many of the responses are overly impressed with bringing down the hammer of parental authority into an uppity teenager. The sad fact of the matter is that too many parents are unprepared for the reality of having adult offspring. It's one thing to be an effective parent when your children are young and don't have a choice but to do whatever you tell them. It's another thing entirely to continue to parent effectively when your children are in their twenties and thirties. The latter requires a level of respect that has to be earned, and involves understanding that you now have zero authority in your child's life.

Parents who tell their eighteen year old children that they do not approve of the boyfriend and demand the relationship be terminated deserve what happens next. Usually that comes down to losing a child. Quite frankly, I'm seeing Foamy's parents here.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Sure, Coro. But Foamy's not expecting his parents to pay rent. He got the **** out of there as fast as he could, and made his own way.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Saying she "Doesn't regard them as people" is a significant exaggeration.



Wrong. I'm not the only one putting in the money. As I explained, she's working and putting in a significant portion of the expenses herself. Obviously I can set conditions under which I won't pay anymore, but I have to make those conditions reasonable. It's more important to me that she get through college than that she do it in the way I think best. If it ever got to the point where getting through college was at risk, I'd ahve to re-think the support.

Of course, if you're an idiot, you'll try to make all the rules and just say "do as I say or no money". Your kid doesn't learn anything that way, except that your support and care is dependent on them slavishly obeying whatever intuitively seems right to you.



No one is talking about "giving it away unconditionally". There's negotiation involved. If you want to just dictate terms because you're contributing PART of the costs, you're going to find your kid eventually deciding it isn't worth it becuase you don't respect or trust them, and care more about your money than you do about them. If your kid isn't screwing up, getting in trouble, and pissing away the money then you pretty much have no business telling them what to do. They don't learn to handle themselves that way.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

True, but not entirely. You have authority in proportion to the support you provide and the willingness of the child to accept it over the alternative. What you have to understand is that you don't have ultimate authority; you have the authority you negotiate for. If the kid wants you to not have that authority, they have to be willing to not accept the benefits. If you want the authority, you have to provide the benefits in proportion to the control you exercise.



Don't overstate your case.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

A minimal chanceofo collecting fees is not the same as taking the case pro bono.



In other words, he took it under extreme risk of not collecting, not pro bono. Note the underlined; contingency doesn't have to be percentage-based either. "Possible" includes "very unlikely."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Not seeing Foamy's parents at all. I am seeing a young adult pushing the limits. She does not understand that at 18 she is legally an adult, not a minor. Thee laws in New Jersey regarding emancipation are very different from California. Reading them has let me understand why the Judge didn't dismiss the whole case outright.

Her demands might make sense if she still lived under her parents authority. I don't think she can have it both ways, have the legal right to disobey her parents, move out, and then claim she is still dependent upon her parents. We will see how this goes, though I expect he judge to rule for the parents in the long run.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

She probably got the idea from alimony and child support laws.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Why wouldn't you do this? Its how the real world works. I have to do what my boss says, or no money. Its a good lesson to learn.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Meh. The problem with ultimatums is people call them.

You have to look at all possible likely outcomes of a particular course of action and ensure that they are acceptable to you when you make an ultimatum.

For instance, parents make rules like that because, ultimately, they care. Whether they are right or wrong, they usually want what's best for their child. Do we agree on that? I mean, exceptions exist, but I truly believe that most parents have a strong priority to do what's best for their children.

So, you want the best education for the best quality of life for your child. If you have certain religious or moral views, you feel its in your children's best interests to follow them, so you try to instill them and keep your kids on the straight and narrow. You might see a particular behavior as risky and try to discourage it. All that is fine...but the problem with ultimatums, is sometimes, they get called.

If your adult child would rather not get an education than follow your idea of what's best for them, would you prefer that they have a shitty life? Or do you want to make it as good as you can? Do you still wish them the best? Or do you stubbornly hope for the opportunity to say "I told you so?"

Basically, if you knew your child was going to continue a course of action you disapproved of, whether or not you continued to try to help them in their life, do you really want to pull their support out from under them to go from "possibly/probably a bad life decision" to "absolutely a bad life decision?"

The thing is we're talking about people we love, people we'd die to protect and help. Ultimately, you don't want them to fail, even if you don't approve of their actions. My issue with ultimatums is if they are called, you either have to back down (which doesn't help when you make future demands), or stick to your guns, which may be more harmful to your child's future than the behavior you are trying to limit. If you love them, the latter is completely unacceptable.

Also, anyone expecting an 18 year old to act like an adult has forgotten what its like to be an 18 year old in love. "I'm thinking she's too self centered. It's all about 'her,'" yeah. Didn't we just say she's 18?

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Because that isn't how families work. It isn't actually even how the real world works. Your boss can demand you perform at your job. He can't demand you live a certain way outside of work; even in jobs like the military where they can to a degree, there's limits. He certainly can't tell you how to spend the money he paid you. So no, that isn't how the real world works.

It is NOT a valuable life lesson that getting money from someone gives them dictatorial power over you.

It's reasonable to tell a kid in college "maintain X standard of grades, or no more money." It isn't reasonable to say "no boyfriend, because I think it will cause you not to maintain that standard." Your boss can tell you not to show up to work drunk. He can't tell you not to drink at home so that you won't ever show up drunk.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."