Legal Line Between Minor and Adult

[ccsmod8]

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 and posting on our public forum. By helping you during your crisis, hopefully there are other youth that are in similar situations can read this for help as well.

Looks like you have a very specific question about running away from home. Like you have seen in a lot of our post here, we aren’t legal experts by any means and cannot tell you exactly what will happen. We go based on what we hear from callers and reaching out to local police. From our knowledge of the runaway laws, it isn’t a crime to run away from home and is viewed as a status offense. So nothing will happen to someone that runs away other than being brought back home, but if there was certain circumstances (ie. probation, prior legal trouble, habitual runaway, missed court dates, etc) then it would be a different story. Those charges will most likely follow up even after you turned 18. If a youth has just runaway and turned 18, that report will not count anymore since they would be considered an adult.

Hope that answer helps!

If someone were to run away in a state where legal actions are taken against minors, will those legal actions be followed through if the minor becomes an adult before being found?