Rhode Island’s Parental Responsibility Statutes

Understanding a parent’s or legal guardian’s possible culpability in Rhode Island for a minor’s “willful wrongdoing” or carelessness.

A parental responsibility statute (which exists in some form in every state) may be used to make parents financially liable for accidents or damages caused by their underage children. Many states need the youngster to commit willful and/or malicious acts before a parent may be held civilly accountable, although the details differ from state to state (a few states hold parents liable for car accidents caused by their minor children).

In this article, we’ll go over some of the most important details of Rhode Island’s parental responsibility statute, such as when it applies and the financial limitations of a parent’s financial responsibilities.

The parental responsibility statute in Rhode Island is stated in Rhode Island General Laws section 9-1-3.

(It should be noted that Rhode Island, like other states, sets the age of majority at 18. So the rule we’re talking about here only applies if a youngster is under the age of 18 when he or she causes property damage or injury.)

Parental Liability for a Minor’s Property Damage and Injury

General Laws Section 9-1-3 of Rhode Island specifies that parents are accountable when their unemancipated youngster knowingly or maliciously causes property damage or physical harm to another person. All a claimant has to prove is that the child would have been accountable for the harm or injury if he or she had been an adult.

“Willful” is a legal word that denotes a person wants to do something and may have meant the outcome as well. If a youngster, for example, throws a rock through a glass, the child has wilfully caused property damage. However, it is not always evident if an action is deliberate. Is it still “willful” if the same youngster tosses a rock in an effort to strike a can placed on a tree stump, but the rock instead hits a window? There are valid reasons on both sides. The person whose glass was damaged would state that the youngster hurled the rock purposefully, thus the conduct was willful in that sense.

In Rhode Island, there are financial limits on a parent’s liability.

According to Section 9-1-3, parents are jointly and severally accountable with their kid for the injuries and damages caused by the child’s activities. This implies that a claimant may seek damages from both the parent and the kid, or from any of them alone. However, parents’ responsibility is restricted to $1,500 for any single conduct. In other words, if a juvenile intentionally destroys someone else’s car and the cost of repair is $2,000, the vehicle owner may only recover $1,500 from the minor’s parent.

Although the culpability of parents is restricted, that of minors is not. Claimants may seek unpaid losses from the juvenile who caused the harm. Furthermore, if a juvenile is responsible under another law, section 9-1-3 does not limit or otherwise impact such obligation.

In Rhode Island, parents may be held liable under common law.

Parental responsibility laws often emphasize particular remedies for specific behaviors. However, responsibility may be imposed by the “common law,” which is a non-statutory collection of legal principles. A common law book known as the “Restatement (Second) of Torts” specifically states:

“A parent has a duty to exercise reasonable care to control his minor child so that it does not intentionally harm others or conducts itself in such a way that creates an unreasonable risk of bodily harm to them, if the parent (a) knows or has reason to know that he has the ability to control his child, and (b) knows or should know of the necessity and opportunity to exercise such control.”

Assume a parent is aware that his or her kid is talking on the phone while driving and does everything but pay attention to the road. In less than a year, the youngster has received five penalties for inattentive driving. The parent is aware of this, yet lets the youngster to drive and does nothing to limit the child’s phone usage. If the kid causes an accident while chatting on the phone, the parent may be held liable for permitting the child to drive and failing to take reasonable precautions to keep the child from causing foreseeable injury.