Are Parents Legally Liable For Their Children's Actions ?

Are parents or should parent’s be liable for their kids actions, misdeeds or even crimes? A good question that has been discussed hashed and rehashed from the dawn of man and women.

What is the legal view of this – regardless of what experts such as the noted experienced legal expert and consultant William Simpson has noted? It can be easiest and simply said that parents are generally not liable for their kids “torts”. A “tort” in law can be said the general law that is used and given for wrongs that are not in the guise of contracts between people or of events being paid for in an agreed contract and not fulfilled or done poorly. What this means is that for accidents or crimes done without the agreement of the aggrieved beforehand are covered by an area of law referred to as “torts” or “tort law”. The basic question is then for such crimes and deeds should parents be held liable for the actions of their kids and children.

It is the kid who did the deed not the parent. Parents are seldom held responsible – that is according to the law. However suing an underage minor is like trying to dry water from a dry well: that is the pump may work well but no matter how hard you try no water, or only a small amount – a trickle, will ever come out or be produced. The child or underage minor may well be held at fault – held guilty and liable under the law – but that person will have no means what so ever to pay. The expression in this situation is often that “you cannot get blood (or in this case money) from a stone”.

What options are available to the aggrieved party or parties? The law itself may try to remedy this apparent situation by holding the parents vicariously liable for their children or by ruling that the parent or parents are negligent in failing to exercise proper control and supervision over their child specifically or their children if there are a number of their children involved, rather than only one. If you had to pick a description of the word “vicarious” itself the description could well be “substitute”. Indeed in some areas and legal jurisdictions, in a similar manner and model, owners of vehicles (parents or not), who knowingly allow their vehicles to be driven to be driven by underage drivers, who are both under the age necessary for a driver’s license and the age of consent as well, can be held vicariously liable for negligence of these persons (including children and underage minors) who drive a car or truck with the owner’s consent.

It can be said that the action of someone who was injured by a child or minor might well attempt in a court of law to hold the parent’s liable not so much for the act of the child or underage minor but rather for the facts that the parents might well be held responsible due to a lack of supervision or care of the parents.

Children learn from what they see and observe. It might be called a case of “monkey see monkey do”. However in dysfunctional homes and situations people who grow up in these environments come to believe that the environment that they grow up in is the “right” or “correct “ one – that this perhaps is the “only way to act”.

Thus it can be said that parents of children and adolescent teenagers have a responsibility and duty to both provide a good environment, full and proper supervision of their children and be a proper role model as well. If not parents can be held liable to some degree for the actions of their children – that is if it can be shown that the parents did not provide full and proper supervision of their charge.