The following laws apply to minors in Minnesota. This is information and education, not legal advice. When you face a legal issue, you should talk with an attorney.

Control of a Minor’s Earnings or Property

A parent or guardian may claim a minor’s wages by notifying the minor’s employer. If the parent or guardian does not give that notice, payment of the earned wages directly to the minor is valid, so the minor effectively controls his or her own earnings. Minn. Stat. § 181.01 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/181.01).

A minor may control his or her own savings account. A deposit made in a minor’s name is held for the minor’s exclusive benefit, free from the control of all other persons except creditors, and the minor’s own receipt, check, or acquittance is a sufficient release to the bank, until a conservator or guardian appointed for the minor delivers a certificate of appointment to the bank. Minn. Stat. § 48.30 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/48.30).

Minor’s Contracts

A minor may make a contract, but the contract is voidable at the minor’s option. The minor may disaffirm it during minority or, for a fully executed contract, must disaffirm it within a reasonable time after reaching the age of majority (18 in Minnesota) or be deemed to have ratified it. Miller v. Smith, 26 Minn. 248, 2 N.W. 942 (1879); Kelly v. Furlong, 194 Minn. 465, 261 N.W. 460 (1935).

A key exception is the contract for necessaries (such as food, shelter, clothing, and medical care), for which the minor remains liable for the reasonable value. Miller v. Smith, 26 Minn. 248, 2 N.W. 942 (1879) (holding a pony “is not within the class of necessaries, as that term, in its legal sense, is ordinarily used and applied”).

In most cases, before being released from a contract, a minor who disaffirms after reaching majority must, where no fraud is present, restore what he received to the extent of the benefits actually derived from it. Kelly v. Furlong, 194 Minn. 465, 261 N.W. 460 (1935).

Wills

A minor may not make a will. Only a person who is 18 or more years of age and of sound mind may make a will. Minn. Stat. § 524.2-501 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/524.2-501).

Inheritance from Parents

If there is no will, an adopted individual has a legal right to a share of the adoptive parents’ estate, because a parent-child relationship is established between the adoptee and the adoptive parents. Minn. Stat. § 524.2-118 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/524.2-118). An adopted individual generally has no right to inherit from the genetic (birth) parents’ estate, because adoption severs that genetic parent-child relationship, unless the adoption was by a stepparent who is the spouse of a genetic parent, in which case the relationship with that genetic parent is preserved. Minn. Stat. § 524.2-119 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/524.2-119). Special provisions exist to determine inheritance where a child is conceived by means of assisted reproduction. Minn. Stat. § 524.2-120 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/524.2-120).

If a person dies without a will and is survived by a spouse, the result depends on the family makeup. When all of the decedent’s children are also children of the surviving spouse, and that spouse has no other children, the surviving spouse inherits the entire estate, and the children take nothing through intestacy. The children share the estate with the surviving spouse only in blended-family situations: if one or more of the decedent’s children are not also the surviving spouse’s children, or the surviving spouse has children who are not the decedent’s, then the spouse takes the first $225,000 plus one-half of the balance, and the children take the remainder. Minn. Stat. § 524.2-102 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/524.2-102). If no spouse survives, the entire intestate estate passes to the decedent’s descendants by representation, so the children share it among themselves (with a deceased child’s branch taking that child’s share). Minn. Stat. § 524.2-103 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/524.2-103).

If the parents were not married to each other and did not leave wills, the children still inherit from either parent, because a parent-child relationship exists between a child and the child’s genetic parents regardless of the parents’ marital status (subject to limited exceptions). Minn. Stat. § 524.2-117 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/524.2-117). That parent-child relationship is what makes a child an heir for purposes of intestate succession. Minn. Stat. § 524.2-116 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/524.2-116).

A parent who makes a will may intentionally disinherit a child, and the will controls when it shows the omission was intentional. If a child born or adopted after the will was executed is left out of the will (an “omitted” after-born or after-adopted child), that child may still be entitled to a statutory share of the estate, unless the omission was intentional or the parent otherwise provided for the child. Minn. Stat. § 524.2-302 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/524.2-302). A child in gestation at the parent’s death is treated as a living heir if the child survives 120 hours after birth. Minn. Stat. § 524.2-108 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/524.2-108).

Uniform Transfers to Minors Act

Under the Minnesota Uniform Transfers to Minors Act, virtually any kind of property (money, real estate, securities, insurance and annuity contracts, and titled personal property) may be transferred to a custodian for a minor’s benefit. Minn. Stat. § 527.29 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/527.29). For every custodianship created on or after May 17, 2020, the custodianship terminates and the property must be turned over to the beneficiary at age 21, regardless of how the transfer was made. The age-18 termination that once applied to transfers by a fiduciary or obligor was eliminated by a 2020 amendment and now survives only for property transferred under those provisions before May 17, 2020. Minn. Stat. § 527.40, subd. 1 (available at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/527.40), as amended by Laws 2020, ch. 86, art. 2, § 3; see Minn. Stat. §§ 527.21 to 527.44.

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The content of this and any related posts has been adopted or copied from the Minnesota House of Representatives Research Department’s December 2010 publication, Youth and the Law – A Guide for Legislators, written as a collaborative effort by the Research Department’s legislative analysts.