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That's false. Minors can enter into binding contracts, however contracts cannot be enforced against minors (but the minor can enforce the contract). Indeed, if this was not the case, there would be no child actors, singers, athletes, endorsers, etc.

If you want to enforce a contract involving a minor against the minor, you need to get the parents to sign, because the enforcement action would proceed against the parent, not the child.

It's unfortunate that your parents misunderstood basic contract law. Maybe if they had spoken to a lawyer, you could have avoided delaying your entrepreneurial ambitions.

>however contracts cannot be enforced against minors

Which is why businesses don't like them, and put provisions in the contract to prohibit minors.

My parents would have let me enter a contract had one been available, but because businesses knew they could never use the contract to their advantage (and against me), they wouldn't make one in the first place.

> Conveniently ignored in all the stories about teenage whiz-kids who make money off internet businesses is that they are invariably committing federal felonies.

Or, y'know, they've had their parents sign up for such things for them. That's what I did.

But they still agreed to a terms of service which prohibits sharing account credentials with the intent to break that agreement. (There could be a service that doesn't, but "no account sharing" seems to be boilerplate in ToS documents).

Or they don't share account credentials. Many parents wouldn't let their children anywhere near something with their banking details in it.

Then your parents must have been technically competent enough to work with Paypal's API or the App Store. Which is pretty rare.

That's silly, am I breaking the TOS if I pay a contractor to setup the API for me?

Stripe's TOS appears to say nothing about sharing credentials, but PayPal explicitly disallows sharing passwords.

I haven't used a developer account on either PayPal or the App Store. However, it's not that difficult to shoulder-surf and copy down an API key.

How did you make the leap from "account credentials" to "banking details"?

Payment processors need some place to send the money to; therefore, often (though I suppose not always), such accounts will have banking details linked to them.

Not at all. Many logins don't have cards associated with them. Even my iTunes account is solely powered by gift cards.

iTunes is not a payment processor for business transactions.

Right! So we agree then.

As someone who legally sold a business as a minor (still a minor today), you are mistaken. Take a look at this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_of_minors

Emancipation is a pretty drastic step that most families would never consider.

Not really. I still live with my parents to this day - all it means is that I become an adult in the legal sense of the word and any contracts I sign are binding and nonvoidable.

Don't you have to prove that you're economically independent? I think that's how it is in Wisconsin.

They way it was explained to me is that I had to prove I was capable of providing for myself - not necessarily that I was receiving no financial support from my parents.

The law in WA (http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=13.64&full=...) reads "the petitioner [must indicate] that he or she has the ability to manage his or her financial affairs".

After both his parents had died, Howard Hughes got himself emancipated at age 19 (in 1924) so that he could take over the family business.

Hang on,so you cannot open a bank account before you are 18 in the US? In most EU countries you need to be 13 to open your own bank account.

Nope. You can have access to an account with your name on it, but it needs to be held jointly with an adult (typically a parent) and they have to accompany you to the bank and give permission to open it.

.....nothing is going to surprise me about the US anymore.

We just opened a checking account for our 17 y/o daughter.

To be specific, the account must be opened in the minors name with a legal parent or guardian as a co-signatory.

Either way, you're right. Minors can not, in the United States, enter into a legally binding contract. They can't even legally purchase a car as there is an implied or express purchase contract.

Minors can enter into a legally binding contract in the U.S. However, the seller in a purchase contract cannot enforce a contract against the minor if the minor does not pay (though the minor can enforce the contract against the seller if the minor pays but does not receive the purchased item, i.e., the car). The purpose of making the parent a co-signatory to the contract is to enforce the contract against the parent if necessary.

Correct. Technically, the contract is voidable by the minor in most cases. There's exceptions, and state rules come into play. For instance, I believe, in CA if a minor misrepresents his/her age, then the contract can not be avoided. In IL, I believe, that's not the case, the contract can still be avoided.

Yep. A Wisconsin auto title has a "parent signature" line - your parents must give you permission to hold the title for a car you purchase with your own money.

IIRC, when I got a bank account at 15 or so, my parents had to go with me to the bank and they had to also have their names on the account.

A bank savings account has no liability, so I was able to open mine when I was 15 or so without any parental involvement.

A bank checking account has all kinds of interesting legal issues WRT bounced checks, so I couldn't open my checking account until after my 18th birthday. Also no credit cards until I was 18.

Nothing defines arbitrary and capricious like our financial and legal systems, so this could have changed last week, probably to "protect us from the terrorists" or "save the children".

At my bank, they won't touch you without a parent if you're under 18. A lot of 12-18 kids "have" savings accounts but they're custodial - they're the child's in name only, and only parents have withdrawal privileges. The tellers seemed confused every time I had to tell them that yes, I do have permission to withdraw my own money.

Only one of my friends was allowed to use their bank account - for everyone else it was college savings only, and all spending money had to be cash.

With my parents' permission, I was able to have a debit card (which processes in the payment network like any MasterCard but has no line of credit) attached to my checking account at 17.