Legal Advise Offer to QAF fiction Writers

[denvercatmom.livejournal.com]

I want to offer legal assistance to anyone who is interested and is writing QAF fiction so your fiction might be more realistic. I can't give specific legal advice but I can tell you what would/could happen in a legal situation you are writing. I am an attorney in CO but a lot of basic stuff is essentially the same in most states.(Louisiana is different).Simply send me a note to qlegal@q.com and I'll get back to you asap. A credit in your stories would be nice. Please no stories about Gale, Randy, etc. They're real people and I would be uncomfortable advising about them. Mods: Please delete if this is outside the rules. I couldn't really tell if it was or it wasn't.


There is obviously a lot of confusion about this post. I meant I would give advice about legal issues in a story you are writing about Queer As Folk. I am not allowed to give legal advice about your personal issues. The offer was made to help make your fiction more realistic. 

Mods and everyone else, I am so sorry for the confusion this has caused. Please take this down if you feel it would be best.

Comments

[anto-nina.livejournal.com]

Hi! I don't write any story, but some things in canon bugs me. I don't know if the law in USA is so strange or if it's TV licentia poetica. I would appreciate itif you would enlighten me :-)

The biggest mystery is Justin's father throwing him out at age 17. Then Justin can't get students scholarship because his father earns too much money. Justin has to wait a year to get this scholarship. It's odd. In Poland parents have duties. 17-years old kid could go to a court and get alimony, and not until he turned 18 only but until he finished his education and could support himself. Court probably couldn't order even a rich parent to pay for expensive school, but then school couldn't look at parent's earnings but at the alimony only.

I guess a parent could waive his parential right (or be deprived of it) when the child is 17 and didn't do anything wrong. It would mean the parent couldn't demand support from the child if he ever needed it, and the child wouldn't inherit anything after the parent's death. But I'm pretty sure the child could still get the alimony until he could support himself.

In the show it never crossed anyone's mind, so I can't help but wonder why...

[anto-nina.livejournal.com]

Oh, we have private universities too. They're usually not so good - if a student pays, he's a customer, and the school is soft on it's paying customers ;-)

But I remember this PIFA schlarschip being mentioned, so it had to be some way for talented students to get it even in private school...

As for the real life, I agree completly :-) And I never understood how come Hobbs had a baseball bat at his prom - in a hotel, where he drived in a limousine most likely...

[ryosato.livejournal.com]

In the USA until you're 24 years old you cannot get government student loans or grants or anything if your parents make too much money. (Too much being anyone that isn't totally poor, even though most middle class people can't afford to pay for their kids to go.) Even if the kid doesn't live at home it doesn't matter. It really, really sucks. In fact, he wouldn't even be able to go to community college without loans and grants. Even our 'cheap public college' is expensive as crap. :

[ryosato.livejournal.com]

I'm no lawyer or anything, I'm just a community college student (also from Colorado lol) who also works at school as an adviser and tutor so I have to know that stuff.

[ipitydaf00l.livejournal.com]

Well, that's true and not true at the same time. You can apply for grants or at least I was informed I could as long as I provided proof (from so many sources it made my head ache) that I was living alone, how long I lived alone, and that I did not receive any help from my parents. There were many strict rules on who could be considered a "reliable" source and IIRC they had to be notarized. (This may not be the case or they could have changed the rules as it's been years since I was 20.)

However, the second I mentioned to recently having a child...well that automatically made me an "adult" and I could apply without having to provide my parent's income on any of the forms. I thought that was very screwy because I had been on my own since 18, but after having my daughter at 21 I was then considered an adult able to take care of myself and did not have to go through that mess again? *facepalm*

Part of the reason why I'm worried about transferring from one college to the next. The one I currently go to isn't too bad on costs, but the one I will have to start attending next semester charges almost double... (Which is why so many of us try to do our courses at one to save some money because grants can only offer so much help.)