Recovery of Property by Minor upon Avoidance.

When a minor avoids a contract, the other contracting party must return the money received from the minor. Any property received from the minor must also be returned. If the property has been sold to a third person who did not know of the minority of the original seller, the minor cannot get the property back, but in such cases the minor is entitled to recover the money value of the property or the money received by the other contracting party from the third person.

Contracts for Necessaries.

A minor can avoid a contract for necessaries but must pay the rea­sonable value for furnished necessaries. This duty of the minor is called a qua si-contractual liability.3 It is a duty which the law imposes upon the minor rather than one created by contract.

Originally necessaries were limited to those things absolutely neces­sary for the sustenance and shelter of the minor. Thus limited, the term would extend only to the most simple foods, clothing, and lodging. In the course of time, the rule was relaxed to extend generally to things relating to the health, education, and comfort of the minor. Thus, the rental of a house used by a married minor is a necessary. And services reasonably necessary to obtaining employment by a minor have been held to be necessaries.

The rule has also been relaxed to hold that whether an item is a nec­essary in a particular case depends upon the financial and social status, or station in life, of the minor. The rule as such does not treat all minors equally. To illustrate, college education may be regarded as necessary for one minor but not for another, depending uporrtheir respective stations in life.

Property other than food or clothing acquired by a minor is generally not regarded as a necessary. Although this rule is obviously sound in the case of jewelry and property used for pleasure, the same view is held even though the minor is self-supporting and uses the property in connection with work, as cools of trade, or an automobile used to go to and from work. The more recent decisions, however, hold that property used by a minor to earn a living is a necessary. Thus, it has been held that a tractor and farm equipment were necessaries for a married minor who supported a family by farming.

It is likely that necessaries will in time come to mean merely that which is important by contemporary standards.

These changes have come about because in this century minors have taken a greater part in the business and working world, in many eases leaving the parental home to lead independent lives as young adults.

FACTS:

Bobby Rogers, a minor, married, quit school, and looked for work. He agreed with the Gastonia Personnel Corporation, an em­ployment agency, that if he obtained em­ployment through it, he would pay a stated commission. Rogers obtained work through the agency but refused to pay the agreed commis­sion of $295, for which he denied liability on the ground of minority.

DECISION:

Rogers must pay the reasonable value of the agency's services. The services of an em­ployment agency should be deemed a "neces­sary" on the theory that they enable a minor "to earn the money required to pay [for] the necessities of life for himself and those who are legally dependent upon him." [Gastonia Person­nel Corporation v Rogers, 276 NC 279, 172 SE2d 19 (1970)]