Actually guardians are legally required to make sure that the kids are being educated until the age of 18.

Dreams that involve using the family home as collateral really should be put off until the kids are no longer legally required to live there.

I'm not arguing that Fiona couldn't realistically (within the parameters of the show) do exactly the same things as every other trashy, neglectful parent from the South Side. I'm arguing that Fiona was always positioned as being a better person than that, and I'm resisting the "grammar" of the show that still wants us…

This ain't Game of Thrones.

I think we'll have to wait and see how far the show runs with certain realities. Fiona didn't just buy a business. She bought the property, which isn't up to code.

Um, that's exactly what it means when you take legal guardianship of minors. And Fiona isn't caring for Liam. She's leaving him in the care of the dependents she has decided to stop caring for, who are letting him run off with the parent whose legal guardianship Fiona legally took for herself. Guardians and parents…

It's more like…Fiona held one illegal party and thinks she should have gotten a major raise and partial ownership for it. What's she going to do, keep holding illegal parties as if that's an actual business move? She did one big thing that netted a fair amount of cash and now she thinks she's a business mogul.

The thing is, she wants credit for having done the whole guardianship thing when she didn't finish that work. It's like dropping out of college after sophomore year and still wanting the diploma. She could do whatever she wanted after raising her dependents to the age of 18. Instead she's allowing Debbie to marry…

We might be headed toward a plot where we find that the whole throuple marriage isn't legal, since Svetlana was already married.

I might agree with you if Fiona had ever once asked Debbie about homework since she (Fiona) took guardianship. Debbie's guardian from the age of 9 was so lax (not cleaning enough to find guns in the couch; not cooking enough to find guns in the fridge) and absent (leaving her dependents alone while she was off getting…

I doubt Debbie will go through with the marriage. I'm kind grossed out that Fiona gave Debbie consent to marry Neil. That is sooooooo not how guardianship is done.

They do this with Carl when Ethan goes back to school. I doubt he's out permanently.

Fiona's doing a lot of risky shit and overestimating her business skills. She "turned Patsy's around" by holding illegal late-night parties after closing time in a venue with no liquor license. She requires her female employees to wear revealing outfits. Does she know anything about wage law? How to avoid a hostile…

I had that thought too. Visnjic is only like 9 years older than Spencer though. Not that it hasn't been done before but it's the only reason I can think of for why the writers care about Lucy's dad and why Flynn doesn't seem interested in killing her.

You're confusing "estate" and "income." Debbie has no estate. She also has no income. If she had money from income in the bank, we could talk about whether that constitutes an estate, but Fiona cannot ask for income, nor can she demand that Debbie accumulate an estate. If Fiona needs the money for Debbie's upkeep, the…

Look up guardianship laws that prevent guardians from spending their dependents' money. Having a baby does not not emancipate a minor. Parents can legally ask their teens for money but actually cannot force unemancipated minors to leave the home. Guardians cannot legally accept money from dependents. There is a law…

Fiona actually is wrong for asking Debbie to pay rent; there is a specifically-worded law stating in plain English that legal guardians are not allowed to ask their minor dependents for money. If Fiona needs money to support Debbie, it has to come from Frank. That's it. That's the law. It's not about whether Debbie…

Debbie dropped out during her pregnancy and they might be playing Carl as 18 by now. Neither one of them are in the orbit of truant officers anymore. Even so, Lip graduated high school, Ian has his GED, and now two kids don't have any eye on educational closure here. However we stretch the timeline, Liam should be in…

We tore the writers a new one for the unrealistic depiction of Ian's illness too. The difference is that the incident only spanned one episode. If Fiona stopped ignoring her legal obligations to provide free housing to her minor dependents, we would stop talking about that too. But the presence of the DCFS guy is now…

Why do people think that repeating the same argument over and over will trick me into thinking that guardianship law doesn't exist?