Hmm, maybe I did not express myself clearly enough, because I did not say, or did not intend to say, that to become legal guardian you must have been married.
Parental rights and legal guardian are different concepts (though by defaul, parental rights include being legal guardian) in any jurisdiction I know enough, and courts declare someone legal guardian of someone else all the time, even if only on temporary base.
Even temporary foster parents also are legal guardians, but are not relatives of the person (though that can also happen).
I don't know about you, but I have good reason to know about that stuff
, even if I do not cover in details all the jurisdictions in the World, or even just in the "Western World".
I was referring to something else.
Again, it depends on the jurisdiction, and in USA, you even have counties, with judges that in some case make basically their law
:-D.
But I was talking about an hypothetical situation in which there is a any kind of social services involved in the decision of the judge, to assess the family (or can be said, ex-family) situation, as ethically (but that does not mean legally), should be, unless the judge has the necessary information, knowledge and experience (and in general, they don't, social services should spend the time and energy needed and have it, judges are not required to).
I can tell you, that exactly due to scenes like the one between Anthony and Myriam in court, even if I agree that Anthony is the first that goes aggressive and physical in that situation and is an abusive husband, social service should suggest that Marc should be place temporarily on a third party, to avoid him feeling in the middle of the fight every day and torn apart etc.
But we are again talking about complex realities, which of course in real life have to, and should be, analysed on a case by case basis, while debating about a game.
"Case by case", because is typical of psychology students or fresh graduates to use a checklist approach (in reality, the DSM was itself born as a checklist approach, specifically for the military), but a serious and experienced professional should be more careful and open.
I always say Zorlun had made a good work on the psychological side of some characters, but it is a game, he never pretended to represent 100% reality and go in all the details of the psyche of the characters, the whole situation with Anthony was a device for the story progression.
About your reference to turning 18, the problem is that at the start, there was some ambiguity on age, that Zorlun decided in the end to sort out by explicitly saying both Katherine and him are already 18 at the start of the game.
A number of incongruences in the game are in reality born by the compromises and decisions Zorlun had to make to keep the show going, and show must go on
Though I can see I let again myself being pulled in on this discussion
, my mistake, I did say one of my defects has become that it is too easy to do it,, didn't I ? :-D :-D