A child can sue their parents in the United States, but not in the way an adult files a lawsuit. Because minors lack full legal capacity, the case has to be brought by an adult representative acting on the child’s behalf, and in some states an old rule called parental immunity still blocks or narrows certain claims. Whether a suit can go forward depends on the type of harm, the state, and who is available to stand in for the child in court.
How a Minor Actually Files a Lawsuit
A child cannot walk into a courthouse and file a complaint on their own. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 17(c) lets a minor sue through a “next friend” or a guardian ad litem when no other representative has been appointed, and state courts follow similar rules.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 17 – Parties Plaintiff and Defendant; Capacity A next friend is usually a parent, relative, or other trusted adult who initiates the case for the child. A guardian ad litem is someone the court appoints to protect the child’s interests in that specific case, often a lawyer whose loyalty runs to the child rather than to either parent.
When the defendant is a parent, the parent cannot also serve as the child’s representative. The court appoints an independent guardian ad litem or lets another adult step in as next friend. That representative investigates the facts, makes recommendations to the judge, and makes sure the case genuinely serves the child.
Settlements involving minors get extra scrutiny too. In most jurisdictions, any settlement reached on a child’s behalf must be approved by a judge before it becomes binding. The court reviews whether the amount is fair and how the money will be managed, typically requiring the funds to be held in a protected account until the child reaches adulthood. A child cannot evaluate whether a settlement is reasonable, so judicial oversight guards against an adult representative accepting a lowball offer.
The Parental Immunity Doctrine
The biggest legal barrier to a child suing a parent is the parental immunity doctrine. It originated in an 1891 Mississippi decision and once blocked children from suing their parents for any reason, on the theory that lawsuits within families would disrupt household harmony and drain family finances.
That blanket rule has eroded significantly. Roughly half of all states have either abolished parental immunity entirely or ruled that parents can generally be held liable for negligence toward their children. The remaining states still recognize some version of the doctrine but have carved out exceptions. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court set an influential framework in Goller v. White, abolishing parental immunity except where the parent’s alleged negligence involved an exercise of parental authority over the child, or ordinary parental discretion about providing food, clothing, housing, or medical care.2Justia Law. Goller v White Many states have adopted similar approaches.
The commonly recognized exceptions to parental immunity include:
- Intentional harm. No state’s immunity doctrine protects a parent who deliberately injures or abuses a child. The doctrine was designed to protect parenting decisions, not violence.
- Motor vehicle accidents. Most states allow children to sue parents over car accidents, largely because liability insurance covers the claim rather than the family’s own money. Insurers have historically tried to invoke parental immunity to avoid paying, and courts have increasingly rejected that argument.
- Business activities. When a parent injures a child while conducting business rather than acting in a parental role, immunity typically does not apply.
A parent who makes a reasonable but imperfect judgment call about what to feed a child or when to see a doctor is generally shielded. A parent who drives drunk with a child in the car is not.
Common Claims Children Bring Against Parents
Negligence and Personal Injury
These are the most common child-versus-parent suits, and insurance is almost always the real reason they get filed. A child injured in a car accident caused by a parent’s careless driving needs medical treatment that the family’s auto policy should cover. When the insurer resists paying, a lawsuit against the parent is the mechanism to force the insurance company’s hand. The child isn’t trying to bankrupt a parent; the child is trying to reach the policy the parent already pays for.
Negligence claims can also arise from unsafe living conditions or failure to supervise young children around known hazards. The representative must prove the standard elements of negligence: the parent owed a duty of care, breached it, and the breach caused actual harm. In states retaining parental immunity, courts will also assess whether the conduct falls outside the protected zone of ordinary parenting discretion.
Emotional Distress
Claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress set a deliberately high bar. The child must show that a parent’s conduct was outrageous, meaning beyond all bounds of decency that a civilized society would tolerate, and that the conduct purposely or recklessly caused severe psychological harm.3Legal Information Institute. Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress Being a strict or even unreasonable parent does not meet that threshold. Sustained patterns of psychological cruelty, bizarre punishment, or deliberate humiliation might.
These cases rely heavily on testimony from mental health professionals who can tie the parent’s specific behavior to documented psychological injuries. Judges are cautious here because the line between bad parenting and legally actionable conduct is genuinely difficult to draw.
Mismanaged Money and Fiduciary Duty
A parent who manages money belonging to a child, whether through a custodial account, a trust, an inheritance, or the child’s own earnings, has a fiduciary duty to use those funds for the child’s benefit. When parents dip into accounts set up under the Uniform Transfers to Minors Act or the Uniform Gifts to Minors Act to cover their own expenses, that is a breach of fiduciary duty and grounds for a lawsuit. Custodial account funds cannot legally be used for a parent’s ordinary support obligations like rent, groceries, or utilities, because those are expenses the parent owes regardless of the account’s existence.
A child who discovers funds were misappropriated can seek restitution, an accounting of how the money was spent, and court-imposed safeguards on any remaining assets. Courts may also remove the parent as custodian and appoint an independent fiduciary. These cases often surface when a child reaches adulthood and finds that a trust or custodial account that should hold substantial assets is empty or nearly so.
Earnings of Child Performers and Influencers
One area where the law has expanded rapidly involves children who earn money through entertainment or social media. The original Coogan Act requires employers to set aside 15 percent of a child performer’s gross earnings in a trust account the child can access at adulthood, and that California law has served as a template for newer protections.
As of 2026, California, Illinois, Minnesota, and Utah all require trust accounts for minors whose online content generates income, and additional states have pending legislation. These laws generally require parents or guardians to deposit a percentage of the child’s earnings into a blocked trust account, maintain records of the child’s work and compensation, and in some cases allow the child to request deletion of content featuring them once they reach adulthood. A child whose parents fail to set aside required earnings or who raid an existing trust has legal grounds to sue for both the statutory violation and breach of fiduciary duty.
Deadlines and Suing After Turning 18
Statutes of limitations work differently for children. Most states pause, or “toll,” the clock while the potential plaintiff is a minor, so the limitation period does not begin running until the child turns 18. If a state has a two-year statute of limitations for personal injury, a child injured at 10 would generally have until age 20 to file rather than losing the right to sue at 12. The rule exists because minors depend on adults to file for them, and the adult who should be filing might be the same person who caused the harm.
For childhood sexual abuse, the trend has moved toward dramatically longer or eliminated deadlines. Over a dozen states, including Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, Utah, and Vermont, have removed statutes of limitations entirely for civil claims based on childhood sexual abuse.4National Conference of State Legislatures. State Civil Statutes of Limitations in Child Sexual Abuse Cases Other states use “discovery rules” that start the clock when the survivor realized the abuse caused them harm, which may be years or decades later. Some states have also passed lookback window laws that temporarily revive claims where the statute of limitations had already expired.
Many lawsuits against parents are actually filed after the child reaches adulthood. Once a person turns 18, the parental immunity doctrine no longer applies, since it only shields parents from suits brought by their minor children. The now-adult plaintiff no longer needs a guardian ad litem and can make independent decisions about whether and how to proceed, and the tolling rule protects the right to file during that window.
Emancipation is a separate legal path rather than a form of suing a parent. It gives a minor adult legal status early, allowing them to file lawsuits independently without a guardian ad litem, but it also ends the parent’s obligation to provide financial support.5Legal Information Institute. Emancipated Minor Most children who need to bring a claim against a parent do so through a guardian ad litem or by waiting until 18, not through emancipation.