Am I emancipated?

[full of grace]

my mother passed away last tuesday and so normally my guardianship would pass to my biological father. he and i have a tenuous relationship; he and my sister have a very hostile relationship, and i would prefer to have her as my legal guardian (my mom would have also) but i don't want to bother with it because i'll be turning 18 in a month and a half.

however, when we were working out child support issues, the subject of emancipation came up. i am 17, as i mentioned, and i graduated high school in three years this past may. i'm pretty much financially independent of my family and have been so since august of this year. someone at the child support office mentioned that because i'm out of high school i'm technically legally emancipated. is this true? if so, what sort of legal repercussions does this have? would this make me sole guardian of myself, so to speak, or does my father still have some legal hold over me?

[aaron]

You're not technically emancipated as a matter of law, but for all intents and purposes you are emancipated. You won't be able to enter into contracts in a full adult capacity until you are 18, but as a financially independent high school graduate it is unlikely that anybody is going to try to assert authority over you or to try to make you move in with your father during the next six or seven weeks before you are legally an adult.