Today, I would like to talk about whether or not you can leave your child unattended, unsupervised, alone at home.
In the past, I had a case where a mother hired a private investigator to follow my client. The private investigator saw that my client had left his two-and-a-half-year-old alone for 15 minutes to get some groceries. As a result, the mother filed an ex-parte restraining order asking for temporary sole custody for my client leaving the child unattended.
While there is no law in California that states you're not allowed to leave your child alone, it is completely unacceptable to leave a child by themself for several reasons.
Self-harm
If a child finds something sharp and hurts themself and neither parent is at home, then the police and CPS can get involved. This can result in completely losing custody of the child to the other parent or someone else, jail time, penalties, and all sorts of unwanted outcomes
In the situation regarding my client mentioned above, the judge made an order recently that said, “everything remains in effect”. While there is a hearing set on a future date, the child has to be supervised by someone at all times. My client told me he thought, “if it is okay to leave me alone, why wouldn't I leave my child alone?” So, the question now becomes...
At what point is it okay to leave a child alone?
When a child is 14, 15, or 16 it might be okay to leave them alone. In determining so, it is important to look at the totality of the child's development and maturity. I personally, would not leave my child alone until the age of 16 as long as my child in very mature. I might also want to be sure that my child is supervised, maybe through a webcam or that I can see what's going on and am very close by. I currently have a two-year-old, so it's kind of hard for me to say at what point I would allow her to be unsupervised because I don't know how she's going to be at that age, but that's just my personal opinion.
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