i have no way out

RE: I have no way out

Hello there –

Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to reach out to us here at the National Runaway Safeline. Looks like you were able to find and post on our public forum. We hope that helping you through your crisis, there are others that will be able to get help as well by reading through the thread.

The only way that you will be removed from your parents’ custody legally and live somewhere else is if you were to report any abuse that was happening at home and there was an investigation or if you filed for emancipation (every state is different, but you have to be 16 years or older) or if there was a court decision to transfer custody to someone else. Those are the only three ways that you could legally leave home at 15. For transferring custody from one person to another isn’t that easy. They will have to go to family court, petition to be your legal guardian, and your parents would have to be willing to give up their own rights. If you were looking into emancipation we can give you some general knowledge of that process. Those laws regarding emancipation are different in every state, so we can’t tell you exactly how it works. What we know is that getting emancipated by the court is a process that does take a while (about 6 months or a year). There also needs to be proof that the youth is able to support him or herself on their own and in some cases they will need to have their parents’ permission to get emancipated. Other requirements sometime indicate that there needs to be witnesses to count for how “mature” the youth is and that they have had to have lived independently from their parents for a certain amount of time. For more specific details on what you would need in order to file for emancipation it would be advised to reach out to your local juvenile county court.

Your parents may give you permission to live with another family if any are close by, but without getting an official document from the court they would still be legally responsible for you. Which means that they can also take away that permission at any given moment and take you back home to live with them once again. So that can be an option for you if you feel like your parents might respond well to you living with someone else. Maybe coming up with a solid plan about what you’re planning on doing, how everything is going to work, and any miscellaneous things could be helpful in them seeing how much work you have put into this plan.

Announcement