Vandals damage home while family away -- they're "children" and won't be charged

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

To counterbalance the uplifting story I posted the other day, here’s one that makes me gnash my teeth and cry.

…
“They urinated on my computer to the point where they fried the inside and it started smoking,” said Brian Kenny, who owns the home with his wife, Kara Kenny. “We got a brand new hot tub this summer that was one of our big purchases that they destroyed with a shovel.”

But that’s not all they found. Televisions were shattered, computers smashed and sticky liquid covered every inch of the floors. Soda and glitter were dumped on the couch, holes were in the wall and broken glass was everywhere. The bedrooms in the home were also ransacked.
…

The Horry County Police Department said that because the two people responsible for damaging the house are children, they could not be charged.
…

:face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

The family’s insurance only covers the structure, not the contents. Neighbors have set up a GoFundMe.

2

Presumably, the kid’s parents are on the hook, right?

3

There has to be more to this story, from every perspective.

How old were the “children”, anyway? 10-year-olds are one thing; 17-year-olds are quite another.

4

Honestly, it’s the family’s fault for not having homeowner’s insurance that covers the contents. What would they do if there was a house fire?

5

I just read on the GoFundMe page that the Kennys are foster parents.

Tough room. THAT’S what I expect from the Dope! :slightly_smiling_face:

6

This wasn’t an accident. You can choose to take the risk of being underinsured, but here I think this is irrelevant - the insurance company shouldn’t be paying for anything.

7

When my car was damaged by another driver’s mistake, I went to my insurance company for the repairs and then they went after the at-fault driver for compensation. So in this case, the family’s homeowner insurer might be able to go after the homeowner’s policy of the children’s parents.

8

https://www.findlaw.com/family/parental-rights-and-liability/parental-liability-basics.html

In most states, parents are responsible for all malicious or willful property damage done by their children. This is called civil parental liability because it’s non-criminal. The parent is obligated only to financially compensate the party harmed by his or her child’s actions.

Regardless of whether the children are prosecuted, if the fact that they caused the damage is not in dispute the parents would usually be on the hook. I have no idea what happens with foster kids. I would guess the state pays?

ETA, just realized I misread the post above, it’s the victims who are foster parents.

9

Maybe not “on the hook,” but it’s probable that the couple could sue them for recovery of damages. The parents will probably hire a lawyer who will try to make a case for the fact that this wasn’t foreseeable, and the children were properly supervised for their age. If this is the first time the children have done anything remotely like this (as far as anyone knows) and their parents, or someone their parents designated, was home, and a few blocks away, the couple could lose.

When I had homeowner’s insurance, my agent made it very clear that there were two kinds of policies: one was the minimum required by my mortgage lender that insured the building for damage, and the other that covered the building, and also covered the contents. I remember very specifically a discussion of where my bicycle had to be, and how it had to be secured in order to be covered.

It was a small house, and the insurance for the house was about $80/month. It was about $20 more to cover the contents, and that included large appliances.

I’m not suggesting that these people deserve what they got, nor that they don’t deserve any help they get now-- this is awful, and yes, it’s terrible that the law does not have some way of seeing to it that the children can’t at the very least get suspended sentences or be placed on probation through, say, age 16.

That way, nothing happens to them now, in case this earlier behavior was simply an aberration, or misunderstanding, or result of a poorly developed thought processes. But if they do something again when they are older, and it turns out this was the beginning of a pattern, then at that point, they can receive harsher sentences as predicate offenders. And that second offense could be anything, including being caught with cigarettes underage, which means they will spend their childhoods looking over their shoulders.

However, I find it hard to believe that the couple didn’t have the option of buying insurance that covered the contents of their house, or that people with a hot tub and multiple TVs could not afford this.

That said, I hope their parents ground them, take away dessert, and their allowances, until they are 30. Also, that they have to help with the clean-up.

10

Stuff happens. I got hit by an uninsured driver once. It was a ding, that I might just have let go, but he started freaking out and admitted he was uninsured. So I called the police. Turned out his registration was expired as well.

11

If the fact that they caused the damage is not in dispute, I don’t see how any of this is relevant to the parents’ liability to compensate the victims for the damage. It does not depend on proving that the parents were negligent. Just that their children did cause actual damage.

12

If the homeowner doesn’t have contents coverage and the structure wasn’t damaged, the homeowner’s insurer doesn’t owe anything to the homeowner and so isn’t likely to get involved at all. The homeowners themselves can go after the children’s parents, who might then be able to get their insurer involved (if they have one).

I don’t know what South Carolina law says specifically, but the age at which children are too young to be charged criminally is usually somewhere in the range of 7 to 14. Under the common law, a child under 7 was declared incompetent to form criminal intent, whereas between 7 and 14 the state could show evidence to rebut the presumption of incapability of intent. Seventeen-year-olds are in every state subject to criminal charges.

13

Reading how it’s worded in a few different articles, it sounds like they are under the age of criminal responsibility, and cannot be charged.

Hopefully the Kellys can recover damages through other means.

14

Insurance is not just for accidents. All homeowners’ policies cover malicious damage (arson, vandalism, etc) to the structure. If they didn’t, the mortgage company would suffer unacceptable risk if the structure is damaged.

As above, protection of the contents inside the house is a separate matter.

15

The “relevance” is that the parents can request a jury trial, and hire a good lawyer.

Although, it might come down to what the victims want relative to what a lawyer would cost. If the victims will settle for less than a lawyer’s estimate, it’s easy. But if the victim’s want all new stuff, plus compensatory damages, punitive damages, and the cost of their Airbnb, a lawyer is probably cheaper.

16

In some states, it does matter. There’s also the problem that most states cap a parent’s liability, and often those limits haven’t been raised in decades. Here in Kansas, for example, parental liability is capped at $5000, unless parental neglect can be proven.

17

I didn’t say it was. But when damage is malicious, the person who caused the damage should usually pay. You may choose to insure as a backup if they can’t pay, or to make life simpler because the insurance company has to deal with recovery. In this case, it’s hardly reasonable to focus criticism on the homeowners for being underinsured. Would you give them a hard time for lacking adequate life insurance if someone murdered them?

18

I still don’t understand what you’re trying to say, then. The insurance company is always going to subrogate to the responsible party where they can.

19

I was responding to @Dewey_Finn blaming the victims for being inadequately insured. Sure, they’d be better of if they had more insurance. But the fault lies with the kids who caused the damage.

20

I would like to know the age of the kids who did this. Sixteen is very different from six years old. And I hear so many stories about police officers (“school resource officers”) handcuffing or arresting small children for what sounds like minor stuff, this story’s whole, “Well, they were just children” sounds fishy somehow.

And sorry for fixating on the insurance question, but people need to have adequate insurance on their stuff.