As college acceptances roll in many parents consider sending the kids off with an emergency credit card. They are often surprised later that while their definition of “emergency” includes the words “life endangering” their kid’s include the words, “low price on new releases.” And so you begin to wonder—are parents legally responsible for the debts of their kids?

Parents are almost always responsible financially for the debts incurred by their minor children. For college age kids who have reached the age of maturity, where parents have an established credit card account and add their kid as a permissive user, they are responsible for the charges he racked up. Where an adult child applies for his own credit card and the parents are not co-signors, debts he accrues are his own responsibility. Stored value cards may be a compromise, since they look like credit cards but are actually a prepaid account and once the money is spent, it’s gone. For the first 18 years, they were your responsibility—now make sure their financial mistakes are their own responsibility.