Niesen v. Niesen

The facts on the hearing were stipulated and it is claimed by the defendant the two boys by changing their surnames emancipated themselves and thus he was no longer obligated to support them. The issue might well be stated, whether minors of the age of approximately twenty and eighteen years who legally forsake their father’s name and embrace the surname of their mother’s second husband are entitled to the continued support of their father.

A father’s duty to support his child rests upon not only moral law but legally upon the voluntary status of parenthood which the father assumed. The…