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What does the panel think, spoilt brat or evil family lawyer? To what degree are the parents at fault if any? The provided everything for her expect the ability to reason, so it would seem.
Teenager sues parents who told her to break up with boyfriend | The Times
What does the panel think, spoilt brat or evil family lawyer? To what degree are the parents at fault if any? The provided everything for her expect the ability to reason, so it would seem.
Teenager sues parents who told her to break up with boyfriend | The Times
Teenager sues parents who told her to break up with boyfriend
Rachel Canning
The teenager sat at one end of the table, staring up at the judge impassively. At the other end, her parents dabbed at their eyes with handkerchiefs.
“They are always going to be your parents,” Judge Peter Bogaard told Rachel Canning. “You may not be ecstatic about it, at this point.”
Ms Canning, 18, is a pupil at a private Roman Catholic high school in New Jersey, where she has a good academic record and a place on the cheerleading team. She is also midway through a spectacular falling out with her parents over her boyfriend, who plays on the school football team.
She has moved out of the family home in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, and filed a lawsuit that has already cost at least $12,000 (£7,000) in legal fees. She has demanded child support of $624 a week, the payment of outstanding school fees and the transfer of a college fund her parents had established in happier times.
Allegations that Ms Canning bullied her sister, or failed to return borrowed clothes, or did not abide by a curfew, together with recollections of screaming rows and things other people heard her parents say, will all be aired like dirty bedsheets in the New Jersey Supreme Court next month.
Ms Canning alleges that her parents, Sean and Elizabeth, effectively abandoned her when she left home in October, a few days before her 18th birthday. She was taken in by the family of a friend, whose father, John Inglesino, is the managing partner of a local law firm and has paid her legal fees.
“We know that if Mr and Mrs Canning are not required to fulfil their legal obligations as parents, that Rachel’s ability to fulfil her potential will be greatly diminished,” said Mr Inglesino, in a statement filed with the court.
Tanya Helfand, the lawyer hired by Mr Inglesino on her behalf, argued that Ms Canning’s relationship with her parents was “abusive” and that her father, a retired police officer, had been “inappropriately affectionate”.
However, Ms Helfand said the crux of the case was their decision to cut off financial support after she refused to stop seeing her boyfriend.
Her parents filed documents from the state’s Division of Child Protection, showing that they had been cleared of the abuse allegations. Mr Canning told a newspaper that the investigator had concluded that their daughter was “spoilt”.
He said: “We’re heartbroken, but what do you do when a child says ‘I don’t want your rules but I want everything under the sun and you to pay for it?’ ”
Judge Bogaard denied the teenager’s requests for immediate payment of tuition, legal fees and living expenses, pending next month’s hearing. He feared the case could set a difficult precedent. “Are we going to open the gates to a 12-year-old suing for an Xbox?” he wondered.
Rachel Canning
The teenager sat at one end of the table, staring up at the judge impassively. At the other end, her parents dabbed at their eyes with handkerchiefs.
“They are always going to be your parents,” Judge Peter Bogaard told Rachel Canning. “You may not be ecstatic about it, at this point.”
Ms Canning, 18, is a pupil at a private Roman Catholic high school in New Jersey, where she has a good academic record and a place on the cheerleading team. She is also midway through a spectacular falling out with her parents over her boyfriend, who plays on the school football team.
She has moved out of the family home in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, and filed a lawsuit that has already cost at least $12,000 (£7,000) in legal fees. She has demanded child support of $624 a week, the payment of outstanding school fees and the transfer of a college fund her parents had established in happier times.
Allegations that Ms Canning bullied her sister, or failed to return borrowed clothes, or did not abide by a curfew, together with recollections of screaming rows and things other people heard her parents say, will all be aired like dirty bedsheets in the New Jersey Supreme Court next month.
Ms Canning alleges that her parents, Sean and Elizabeth, effectively abandoned her when she left home in October, a few days before her 18th birthday. She was taken in by the family of a friend, whose father, John Inglesino, is the managing partner of a local law firm and has paid her legal fees.
“We know that if Mr and Mrs Canning are not required to fulfil their legal obligations as parents, that Rachel’s ability to fulfil her potential will be greatly diminished,” said Mr Inglesino, in a statement filed with the court.
Tanya Helfand, the lawyer hired by Mr Inglesino on her behalf, argued that Ms Canning’s relationship with her parents was “abusive” and that her father, a retired police officer, had been “inappropriately affectionate”.
However, Ms Helfand said the crux of the case was their decision to cut off financial support after she refused to stop seeing her boyfriend.
Her parents filed documents from the state’s Division of Child Protection, showing that they had been cleared of the abuse allegations. Mr Canning told a newspaper that the investigator had concluded that their daughter was “spoilt”.
He said: “We’re heartbroken, but what do you do when a child says ‘I don’t want your rules but I want everything under the sun and you to pay for it?’ ”
Judge Bogaard denied the teenager’s requests for immediate payment of tuition, legal fees and living expenses, pending next month’s hearing. He feared the case could set a difficult precedent. “Are we going to open the gates to a 12-year-old suing for an Xbox?” he wondered.
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