Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III

ferdi254

Banned
Actually Kat could reverse the deal. As long as you are under 14 you are only allowed to make „Taschengeldgeschäfte“ (pocket money deals reflecting the amount of money kids get from their parents monthly, and yes, this is a fully valid legal term),

So in terms of animals a 13 year old can buy a couple fish for an aquarium, maybe a small (staying small that is) turtle, but a rabbit or a guinea pig would stretch it and dogs and cats are out.

So the purchase of the dog was never a legal business deal to start with and as it’s the sellers liability to check the age of the customer Kat could have the local Gewerbeaufsichtsamt (an organization whose job it is to make sure businesses keep to the rules) go after him.

But if this was the first and only time the fine will be the equivalent of 50€ max, maybe even waived.

With 14 you are allowed larger deals but still with serious limits on amount and duration.
 
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ferdi254

Banned
Oh and with 14 you are allowed to have sex (sex with a person below 14 is always rape), change your religion with your parents having no say about it plus some others. 16 will make buying and consuming beer and wine legal and OTL around this time the age of full adulthood was changed from 21 to 18.
 
Yes, that's true, but what also matters here is that Kat is rich and that the pocket money could be correspondingly larger.
In addition, the childs savings are included in the pocket money! As a result, children can buy expensive things and the business is legal.
But i think animals are a special case, because you have to take care of them?

And the alcohol consumption at home is a matter of the parents, so it can be legal before the age of 16 ^^
 
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ferdi254

Banned
Aconitum sorry you are wrong on both accounts. If parents allow alcohol consumption of their underage children there can be massive legal repercussions (of course if no one finds out nothing happens).

And a child below 14 can only use up sums in single purchases up to a very low amount, no matter how high the actual pocket money is or any existing savings.

The assumption in the law is that individual circumstances do not matter one has to draw a line. Same with sex. You have sex with somebody under 14. Rape, no discussion possible.

And for business it is the same. Clear easy rules are much better than each shop owner having to try to find out how much money is behind the 13 year old.
 
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Aconitum sorry you are wrong on both accounts. If parents allow alcohol consumption of their underage children there can be massive legal repercussions (of course if no one finds out nothing happens).

And a child below 14 can only use up sums in single purchases up to a very low amount, no matter how high the actual pocket money is or any existing savings.
Nope, the Taschengeld Paragraph is not bound to a maximum amount.
Parents can of course try to cancel the purchase, but making the purchase is possible as long as she used her personal savings.

I just looked and you are right that it is actually true for ages 14-16 that parents can give consent to alcohol consumption at home.
 
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ferdi254

Banned
It has no specific amount as that of course varies with the age and individual circumstances but there is a bona fide amount. So as long as the amount is paid in cash and there are no long term obligations you are fine as a dealer. But if it is unclear if the child can do the business and its long term consequences…
and the dog itself may have easily been within Sophie‘s possibilities the long term caring is obviously not.
 
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It has no specific amount as that of course varies with the age and individual circumstances but there is a bona fide amount. So as long as the amount is paid in cash and there are no long term obligations you are fine as a dealer. But if it is unclear if the child can do the business and its long term consequences…
and thr dog itself may have easily been within Sophie‘s possibilities the long term caring is obviously not.
I'm not even sure if that's allowed regardless of the amount or the possibilities of longterm care....
Alcohol and cigarettes, for example, are not allowed either, although it would be part of the small sum.

Edit: I just checked and the selling of vertebrates to Children can only be done after the age of 16^^ so no problems for the parents, because the Taschengeld Paragraph is not even needed.
 
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All of this discussion is irrelevant to the timeline because after making Sophie sweat about the dog Kat is going to say that the dog is welcome to the family and Sophie will be the primary caretaker of the dog.
The main point that Kat is going emphasize to Sophie is that she should not be afraid to ask Kat and Doug for anything, there is no reason to sneak around in fear of disapproval, and Sophie is just as much part of the family like Tatiana, Malcolm, and Maria are.
 
Part 128, Chapter 2180
Chapter Two Thousand One Hundred Eighty



17th September 1972

Tempelhof, Berlin

There were some lessons that schools couldn’t teach. Kat thought of this as she watched Sophie and Ziska play with Sprocket down in the garden from her office window. It was something that Kiki had wasted a lot of breath over the years when it came to her girls. Kat understood that she was projecting many of her own issues onto the girls under her care. She had certainly talked Peter Holz enough about that over the years. The reality was that actions had consequences, especially for young women and the world was not a very forgiving place.

For Sophie to get herself in over her head with a puppy was a relatively harmless way to learn that lesson, far better than have that happen in a few years when the stakes were far higher. Of course, she had issues of her own. For the first eight years of her life, anything she had could be taken away with even the thinnest of pretext. Even now, Sophie tended to look with suspicion at anything that was just given to her. She had exhausted her personal resources before she had asked Kat for help, with great reluctance. Sophie had thought that Kat was going to take the puppy away from her, as if Kat, Petia, and Darya had not been keeping a close eye on things and making sure that she properly cared for Sprocket. Kat figured that she would need to find a way to get Sophie to accept the money reimbursing her for the expenses she had incurred. After all, it was obvious that Sprocket had found a home.

Kat had also learned that Sophie had been saving up for a new bicycle because that was the genesis of Sprocket’s name. That had resulted in a further discussion about what exactly she had been looking at. In this case, a type of bicycle that was a sleek design and was clearly not intended for girls. Kat understood the concept. Decades earlier bicycles had been designed for women because in England they would need to ride while wearing what was deemed acceptable attire. That continued to echo worldwide in what had become a cultural artifact. The sort that Kat had encountered often and understood the need to bull through at times.

That had left the question of just how Sophie had planned to make such a large purchase? Especially after she had already made one in the form of Sprocket. Kat had a feeling that she wasn’t going to like the answer one bit because while it was the sort of thing that she had encouraged, the resulting actions were not.



Los Angeles, California

Ritchie saw the newspaper as he walked into the Convenience Store. They had stopped off to get something to drink after a long Saturday night in Skid Row having drawn the short straw this week. There had been a killing of the sort that was typically deemed to be Community Service and Robbery/Homicide had gone through the motions of starting an investigation. The odds were high that it would go cold unless the suspect fell into RHD’s hands. Of course, the odds of that happening were far higher than you would think. As Ritchie looked over the bottles of fruit juice in the cooler, Mike stopped to read the paper.

If the Sunday Morning edition of the Los Angeles Times had this story, then it was going to be a massive national story by that evening. Big Mike looked at the headlines with a snort. He had told Ritchie many times what he thought of politicians, particularly those in Parker Center. Still, it was looking like the Republican Party’s 1972 Presidential Candidate was crooked as a barrel of snakes.

“Governor Agnew implicated in Maryland Kickback Scandal” Mike read the headline aloud, “Get this, Tricky Dick is quoted as saying, America deserves far better than having a President who is a crook.”

“Then this is a good week to be Nixon” Ritchie replied with a shrug. Last week, as the debate over the whether or not to have debates in October had heated up, Nixon had not looked as great. Because he was currently ahead in the race, Nixon had clearly stated he wasn’t interested. The public had not liked that, and Agnew had basically called Nixon a coward on national television. Then this latest story had dropped. As far as Ritchie was concerned, most of what the President did was Foreign Policy and he had seen firsthand what looked like in places like China and South America, under a few different Administrations. When it came Presidential Politics, Ritchie always thought about which candidate was least likely to get him killed. Between Nixon and Agnew, it was sort of a wash.

“You have an opinion about this?” Mike asked the Clerk behind the counter. The man didn’t reply, instead he just gave Mike a disinterested look. Ritchie knew the type. The Clerk had seen and heard nearly everything while working this job. He just sold the newspapers and couldn’t care less about what was in them.

That was when one of the neighborhood’s skells entered the store, took one look at Ritchie and Mike’s uniforms, turned on his heel and left. Mike saw that and chuckled, the Clerk looked annoyed. Ritchie had no idea what the subtext of this situation was, but he had a feeling that the mere presence of them in the store must have interrupted whatever side hustle the Clerk had going.
 
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Kat will probably find a job for Sophie that allows her to earn money for her bike but it won't be too hard for her to do but the problem is to make Sophie believe that the job is real and not a make work job.

IOTL when the Agnew scandal first broke it took less then two months from the first report in the Wall Street Journal to his resignation but that was under intense pressure from Nixon Administration aides especially Al Haig.
I doubt that President Rockefeller has any influence on Agnew to step down and I don't know of any mechanism that would have allowed the Republican National Committee to involuntary replace a nominee who didn't step on their own or died.
If more information comes out that is in line with the IOTL scandal and Agnew original plan to fight it then there will be a historic landslide election victory for Nixon ITTL that will unlike IOTL when Nixon had no coattails to speak of.
 
Kat will probably find a job for Sophie that allows her to earn money for her bike but it won't be too hard for her to do but the problem is to make Sophie believe that the job is real and not a make work job.
IIRC that might run into child labour laws that for Germany predate the PoD. At least in contexts that aren't defined as a 'family business'.
 
There are a few things that Sophie can do for family, I believe that Aunt Marcella is not doing well and Sophie can help out a bit as Marcella seems to me someone when values their own independence and doesn’t want a lof of strangers to care for her.
The main problem is that Sophie views anything given to her can also be taken away from her very easily and only buying things with her own money can she think that it will s hers for real.
 
There are a few things that Sophie can do for family, I believe that Aunt Marcella is not doing well and Sophie can help out a bit as Marcella seems to me someone when values their own independence and doesn’t want a lof of strangers to care for her.
The main problem is that Sophie views anything given to her can also be taken away from her very easily and only buying things with her own money can she think that it will s hers for real.
And that is a a good thing I think.
 
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