Family Law Rights Exploration

Well, to start off with, I was wondering if I could talk about some of my lived experiences with you to help myself to determine if there are any breaches of family law - and my rights in relation to family law - going on between myself and those around me?

Certainly. So, for the sake of context, you should know that I am an adult woman who currently lives with my family - a senior aged mother and a sibling who is only one year older than me - in a rural home residence for a combination of financial and personal reasons. This family comes from a very difficult, low-income background, and because of this my family and I are used to going without a lot of luxuries and needs and doing things together as a tight unit. In the past I was never ashamed of how I am still living at home with my family as an adult partly because of how common of a practice this has become for my generation of people and younger, and partly because of how I was told that I would be treated with respect as an adult by the rest of my family once I grew up. However, as time has gone by, it seems to me that my family has not been "living up to their end of the bargain" so to speak, because of how they keep peer-pressuring me into doing things their way.

Certainly. I have gotten into the habit of taking notes whenever I feel like my boundaries are being crossed in a nonconsensual way, and because of this, I now have many examples that I would like to discuss with you for the sake of transparency and clarity. That's why I would like for us to refrain from exploring the legal aspects of my case until I can convey to you all of the main points that I would like to get across with you.

Yes. For example, it has always been my long-term goal to go into business for myself. This is something that I have told my family that I have wanted to do for years. Decades, even. In order to achieve this goal, though, I need to increase the amount of control that I have over my finances by opening a new bank account that I can use to conduct strategic, freelance business transactions with, until I can save up enough money to open an official business bank account, purchase an LLC, and start hiring employees to work for me. However, my family unit is quite risk adverse, and even though they do not have a genuine interest in working with me to execute my business plans, they are opposed to the idea of me opening up a new bank account that is not connected in some capacity to their bank accounts.

Furthermore, my family still wants me to run all of my prospective purchases by them first to get their explicit permission before I can complete the transactions in question - even though I have told my family on multiple occassions that I am prefer to keep some of my transactions to myself so that I can present them with thoughtful surprise gifts later on as a show of love and appreciation towards them.

In a moment. There are more examples that need to be taken into consideration before we can get to that point.

Very well. Now, as things currently stand for me, my family has been quite kind to me because of how they are covering my primary living expenses - such as covering the cost of my groceries and electricity bills - and permitting me to stay with them without being expected to pay them rent money because I have been out of work for over a year now due to an extremely difficult job market to navigate my way through. This means that if I do not think carefully and mindfully about how I conduct myself while I am in my family's presence, then they would have the right to kick me out of the house, take away all of my personal belongings, and cause me to become a homeless person with no hope for the future. I came close to this point due to a bad argument that broke out between myself and my family 2 years ago, and because of this my family has lost their trust in me and have been using this argument as their justification to tighten their control over my daily life and personal liberties.

In a moment. There are still more examples that need to be taken into consideration before we can get to that point.

Very well. Now, another factor of my situtation that has become a matter of contention is how mobile I am. For as things currently stand, I am not allowed to travel anywhere by myself out of my family's concern for my physical safety. They believe that I would become susceptible to getting attacked and mugged without having them around. That's why I am not allowed to go for walks around my neighborhood by myself, why I always have to seek my family's permission to go outside and do things like taking out the garbage and spend time in my home's backyard, and why my family will often follow me outside so that they can keep a close eye on me while I am outside even though I do not normally ask them for this kind of support.

Hold on. There is more. This is also part of the reason why my family has repeatedly refused my requests to teach me how to drive - or even allow me to go take a course so that I can learn how to drive from someone else - even though my intention for learning how to drive would be to become better capable of providing support to my family in their times of need. The worst part of all, though, is how I do not have my family's permissiont to stay home alone by myself. Whenever my family goes out into town to take care of some errands, I am always expected to be ready to go along with them even if there is no practical point or reason for me to do so, and any exceptions to this rule are few and far between.

In a moment I would. There are some more examples that I would like to discuss with you first, though.

Well, while I will acknowledge that many of my other examples are rather petty in nature in how small they are, what still concerns me about them is how they have gone unaddressed for so long that they have metamorphosed into something worse than what they were originally. For example, my family's minor concerns about how well I look in public settings have evolved in episodes of blatent boundary crossing and body-shaming. Some days I can peacefully go about my day without getting disturbed for hours straight, while on other days my family will approach and interrupt me on-and-off multiple times over trivial matters multiple times over the course of just a few hours.

Hold on, there is more. Although my family has given me two rooms where I can streach out, relax, and work remotely in, I have very little to no say about how I can decorate and manage these spaces simply because of how they do not belong to me directly. That's why I sometimes have to sneak some of my personal items back and forth between these two rooms so that my family won't see me doing this action and criticize me for trying to make changes to these two rooms without asking for their feedback and permission to do so first. Rather than respect a request that I had made many months ago to not ask me to do things for them as soon as I step out of the bathroom after making a bathroom break, my family has ignored this request in favor of getting into the undesired habit of summoning me and making requests of me as soon as my bathroom breaks are done on a daily basis. Multiple promises that my family has made for me have been broken and/or left unfulfilled as well.

Hold on, there is more. I always have to be careful to avoid getting into time-consuming, uncomfortable, one-sided conversations with my family were I can barely speak or express my true thoughts and opinions clearly. Furthermore, I have found that it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to express myself while I am in my family's company because of how quick they can be to pass judgement on me - especially in the events where I choose to express thoughts and/or take actions that they dislike and/or disagree with.

Hold on, there is more. For the worst part of all is that, whenever I try to be honest with my family and convey to them my disatisfaction with some of the things that they do - especially the actions and choices that I know can have a direct impact upon me - my family's go-to response is to get angry, try to justify their actions by reiterating their running list of all of the hardships that they are currently experiencing in their lives, and to be dismissive towards me by saying things like "You're being too sensitive." , "I'm only doing this because I care about you." , "It would break my heart if I did anything that made you angry with me." "You know I love you, right?" and "You're not angry with me, are you?"

Hold on, there is more. In the past, it was customary for my family and I to mimic each others computer setups, operating systems, and the software that we like to use - such as the Microsoft Suite. However, after I grew up, I have found that I now have a continous need to branch off into handling my computer hardware and software in ways that greatly differs from the norm that my family had established during my childhood for the sake of nurturing my career and fufilling my professional ambitions. The problem is that because my family is also the group who pays for and manages our home internet and private home network plans, my family has developed a tendency to give me the third degree and discourage me from trying new things with my technology out of their concern that my actions is going to have a negative impact on them.

Yes, there is at least one more key example that I can think of that I would like to share. For in my efforts to resolve a major conflict in the past, I volunteered myself to go see a psychologist. In doing so, I was diagnosed with being on the autism spectrum and having generalized anxiety disorder. Apparently, before this conflict occurred, my family has suspected for a long time that I was neurodivergent because of the some of the things that their old pediatrician told them, but I was unaware that this was the case until they chose to tell me about their suspicions while I was in the middle of getting my GED in order to graduate from high school. In other words, it would appear that my family has been judging me for being disabled for a long time even though I did not have a diagnosis for it.

Hold on. There's more. Now that I do have this diagnosis, my family has become more open about their judgements towards me for being nerodivergent, and they have pressured me into getting things like disability ID cards that they want me to carry on my person at all times in the event that I were to get seperated from them. They have also been encouraging me to get into the habit of telling people about my neurodivergence as soon as I meet them going forward. My family keeps telling me that their reasons for doing this is because they simply want me to become a more honest person with them, but in the back of my mind I can't help but to suspect that the true reason why they are doing this is because they believe that doing so would allow my family to justify their disrespectful behavior towards me more easily to the general public - thereby making it more difficult for myself to seek support elsewhere and to become more obedient towards my family and their wishes as a result.

Perhaps. The problem is that I cannot discuss the specifics of this case over the phone because it might tip my family off that I am seeking legal support without their permission and consent. This being the case, I think that now might be a good time to discuss the specific advice that you would like to share about how I can possibly assert my legal rights and gain more independence.

Maybe. However, there is a large number of obstacles that are making it difficult for me to seek support using traditional methods. *, I am not in a position where I can open a bank account independently because if this bank were to send me any physical mail that relates to this account then I would get caught. *, I have been trying to find new employment for over a year now but I have not been able to make any progress in this regard because I can only work remotely since I do not have a car that I can commute to a job with, and almost all of the companies who are hiring right now are refusing to take on remote workers like me. *, I do not know a social worker who I can confide this sensitive information with securely. & *, all of the friends who I trust live too far away from where I am to provide me with immediate help and support.

Maybe. I would like to be connected with local lawyers who may be able to assist me with my case. However, the risk for doing so over the phone would be too great. I cannot take any phone calls to discuss my case because my family is not used to seeing me talking over the phone. This means that if they were to stumble across me while I am in the middle of making a phone call, then I would get caught, and I would end up in greater trouble than i currently am as a result.

Yes, I think that I would be okay with discussing my case with a legal representative via email. However, I can concerned that the information you are asking for might be saved for long term use on this website, the freelawchat website, without my consent. This being the case, can you refer me to a list of legal representatives with whom I could speak with without using the phone within the US state of Alabama?

Yes please. I tried visiting these websites in the past, but I got confused and overwhelmed by how these websites were laid out.