NJ honor student sues parents after they cut her off

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'We love our child and miss her,' Sean Canning, father of 18-year-old plaintiff Rachel Canning, said of the ongoing family feud. 'This is terrible. It's killing me and my wife. We have a child we want home.'

An 18-year-old New Jersey honor student and cheerleader has been tossed from her parents' Lincoln Park home, but demands that her mother and father continue to pay her private high school and impending college costs - as well as her mounting lawyer fees, according to her lawsuit.

Rachel Canning claims she's been out of her parents' home since her 18th birthday, Nov. 1, after her parents vowed to cut her off 'from all support both financially and emotionally.'

But Sean and Elizabeth Canning say their 'spoiled' college-bound daughter doesn't live by their house rules and left the home because she didn't like the law of the land - overseen by her father, a former Lincoln Park police chief.

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The Morris Catholic High School senior and lacrosse player instead has lived at the Rockaway, N.J., home of a classmate, whose father, John Inglesino, has foot the bill for the suit.

'My parents have rationalized their actions by blaming me for not following their rules,' Rachel said in her court papers, according to The Daily Record of Morristown, N.J. 'They stopped paying my high school tuition to punish the school and me and have redirected my college fund, indicating their refusal to afford me an education as a punishment.'

Canning filed suit last week and is scheduled to appear with her attorney, Tanya Helfand, at 3 p.m. Tuesday in Morristown Family Court.

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The teen will demand her parents pay a Morris Catholic tuition bill of $5,306 as well as $12,597 in accrued legal fees.

And the accomplished student, who has been accepted to several colleges, wants her parents, Sean and Elizabeth Canning, to pay her secondary schooling costs.

The unique suit could stand a chance because of a New Jersey court decision that found young adults can be dependent on their parents beyond their 18th birthday, long considered the age a personally is legally an independent adult.

'A child's admittance and attendance at college will overcome the rebuttable presumption that a child may be emancipated at age 18,' the decision found, The Daily Record reported.

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Rather, it comes down to 'a face-sensitive analysis that looks at whether the child has moved beyond the sphere of influence and responsibility exercised by a parent and has obtained an independent status of his or her own,' Helfand, the teen's attorney, writes in her court papers.

Further complicating the matter is Rachel Canning's allegation of domestic abuse last October and a teacher who witnessed the teen and her mother engaged in a rough conversation that ended in a nasty way.

But Sean Canning, furious that the family feud has reached the courts, claims a Division of Child Protection and Permanency representative visited the family home and found Rachel was a 'spoiled' and petulant child and ended the investigation, The Daily Record reported.

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Sean Canning says the athletic, brainy teen refused to follow the rules of his home, like being respectful, doing chores, coming home by curfew and breaking off a relationship with a boyfriend the parents dislike.

'We love our child and miss her. This is terrible. It's killing me and my wife. We have a child we want home,' Sean Canning told the newspaper. 'We're not Draconian and now we're getting hauled into court. She's demanding that we pay her bills but she doesn't want to live at home and she's saying, 'I don't want to live under your rules.''

The family, in court documents, instead contends Rachel Canning 'emancipated' herself from her parents by voluntarily moving out, thus freeing the parents from the responsibility of paying her bills.

'We're heartbroken, but what do you do when a child says 'I don't want your rules but I want everything under the sun and you to pay for it?'' Canning told The Daily Record.

sgoldstein@nydailynews.com or follow on Twitter