Also known as: minors · infant
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A person who has not reached the age of majority, typically eighteen, and who is not emancipated. Such a person lacks full legal capacity to enter binding contracts, make wills, or receive default judgments without representation.
Matthew Martinez sued Monarch Pharmaceuticals for a sum certain after the company failed to appear. Because one defendant was a minor, the clerk refused to enter judgment under the rule permitting default only against non-minors. The plaintiff had to apply to the court instead.
Marcus Mitchell knew his minor son repeatedly rode a skateboard recklessly near neighbors. When the child injured Meredith Maxwell, the court held Marcus liable for failing to exercise reasonable care to control the minor despite having both ability and opportunity to intervene.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
Miles Montgomery, age seventeen, executed a document purporting to leave his savings to Madison Meyers. After his death the court declared the instrument void because a minor lacks capacity to make a will under the applicable age-of-majority rule.
After Malcolm McKinley's death, his minor child claimed the statutory homestead allowance. The court charged the value of any constitutional homestead interest against that allowance because the family home formed part of the estate.
Two mortgagees sought appointment of a receiver over property owned by a minor heir's trust. The senior mortgagee prevailed under the priority rule even though a minor exception for rent assignment agreements was argued by the junior party.
Meredith Maxwell, a minor, purchased a car from Morgan Financial and later returned it while demanding her money back. She successfully disaffirmed the contract under the infancy defense designed to protect minors from overreaching.
The rule requires that a defendant be neither a minor nor incompetent before the clerk may enter judgment on a sum-certain claim. A minor must be represented by a guardian, so the plaintiff must apply to the court instead.
Supporting sources
At common law a minor may disaffirm any contract to avoid enforcement, returning any consideration received. The policy protects minors from their own immaturity and from adult overreaching.
Supporting sources
No. A person who has not reached the age of majority lacks capacity to make a will, rendering any purported will void.
Supporting sources
A parent must exercise reasonable care to control the minor child when the parent knows or has reason to know both of the ability to control the child and of the necessity and opportunity to do so.
Supporting sources
…& 25 Vict., c. 100, § 59, that formed the core of English anti-abortion law until the liberalizing reforms of 1967. In 1929, the Infant Life (Preservation) Act, 19 & 20 Geo. 5, c. 34, came into being. Its emphasis was upon the destruction of "the life of a child capable of being born alive." It made a willful act performed…