A guy at my college (age 19), recently lost his parents in a car wreck. He has three younger siblings, age 3, 5 and 9 and the courts gave him custody. There are no other relatives, his parents were older and had no siblings and his grandparents are in retirement homes. He also has a 16-year-old brother who was emancipated so that he could live with a friend and finish school in their hometown.
He gets most of the insurance settlement and inheritance to raise the kids, his brother gets a share to live on too. It's enough to get him through college and pay for living expenses for five years or so, but they aren't getting rich off of it.
The college has offered him family housing (a 3 bedroom apartment) so he can keep his siblings with him at school and free child care for the youngest one (the others are in elementary school), but he's having legal problems with guardianship because he is their brother, not their father.
Can he adopt his siblings to clarify the legal relationship, and would that make him their dad and brother at the same time? Or is just being their brother/legal guardian enough legal relationship to really take them on until they become adults?
In the middle of all of this his fiancée left him. Poor guy, I'll be shocked if he actually manages to finish college.
I was also surprised when the local paper found out that there is another guy in school who also has custody of a sibling, one of the football players is raising his little brother after his mom died (dad's not in the picture). How common is this?
Tags: