Terms Used In South Carolina Code > Title 63 > Chapter 7 > Article 9 - Legal Guardianship With Supplemental Benefits

• Attachment: A procedure by which a person's property is seized to pay judgments levied by the court.
• Child: means a person under the age of twenty-one. See South Carolina Code 63-7-2820
• Court: means the family court. See South Carolina Code 63-7-20
• Department: means the Department of Social Services. See South Carolina Code 63-7-2820
• Fictive kin: means an individual who is not related by birth, adoption, or marriage to a child but has an emotionally significant relationship with the child or the child's family. See South Carolina Code 63-7-2820
• Guardian: A person legally empowered and charged with the duty of taking care of and managing the property of another person who because of age, intellect, or health, is incapable of managing his (her) own affairs.
• Guardian: means a person who legally has the care and management of a child. See South Carolina Code 63-1-40
• Legal custody: means the right to the physical custody, care, and control of a child; the right to determine where the child shall live; the right and duty to provide protection, food, clothing, shelter, ordinary medical care, education, supervision, and discipline for a child and in an emergency to authorize surgery or other extraordinary care. See South Carolina Code 63-7-20
• Legal Guardian: means a person appointed by the court through the judicial establishment of a legal guardianship to become the caretaker of a child. See South Carolina Code 63-7-20
• Legal Guardianship: means :
  
  (a) a judicially established relationship between a child and caretaker that is intended to be permanent and self-sustaining and transfers to the caretaker the following parental rights and responsibilities with respect to the child:
  
  (i) the duty to provide protection, support, food, clothing, shelter, supervision, education, and care;
  
  (ii) physical custody of the child;
  
  (iii) legal custody when family court has not awarded legal custody to another person, agency, or institution;
  
  (iv) the right to consent to marriage, enlistment in the armed forces, and medical and surgical treatment;
  
  (v) the duty and authority to represent the child in legal actions and to make decisions of substantial legal significance affecting the child;
  
  (vi) the right to determine the nature and extent of the child's contact with other persons; and
  
  (vii) the right to manage the child's income and assets. See South Carolina Code 63-7-20
• Parent: means biological parent, adoptive parents, step-parent, or person with legal custody. See South Carolina Code 63-1-40
• Relative: means an individual within the first, second, or third degree to a parent or stepparent of a child who may be related through blood, marriage, or adoption or through the establishment of a fictive kin relationship. See South Carolina Code 63-7-2820
• Supplemental legal guardianship benefits: means monthly payments made by the department to a legal guardian pursuant to and after entering a written agreement with a relative or fictive kin to provide support for a child who without supplemental support may not achieve permanency through legal guardianship. See South Carolina Code 63-7-2820