What Are The Legal Steps To Get Emancipated In Tennessee As A 16 Year Old?

Location: Tennessee.

I'm going to start this out with my questions, just in case you don't want to read the tangent below explaining my situation (fully valid, I yap a lot): How can I legally get emancipated as a 16 year old? Can you explain to me or give me the steps I need to take to qualify? Is my situation dire enough for me to get emancipated? Any information would help me greatly. Thank you so much!

I apologize in advance for the long post. I am 16 years old, turning 17 in four months, and I desperately want to get emancipated, but I don't know the steps nor the laws surrounding that.

This year has been hell for me. My father kicked me out of my house and told me that I was "no longer his daughter" and "I can go live with my mom since I betrayed him." He said this because my mother claimed me on taxes, even though I was living with her for no more than two months. I had never told her to claim me on taxes, but because I never told her not to, he thought I was scheming with her to betray him. In reality, the only reason he had gotten so upset about the money was because he promised to pay back a loan his mother gave him with the tax money he got for me. That's why he got so upset and kicked me out. My mother did something similar to me when I was twelve, but that's a whole separate can of worms.

She promised me that the taxes were going to go to me—getting me clothes, new shoes, a dresser because I didn't have one, school supplies, food—just regular stuff that a child needs. I was an idiot for thinking that was true. She spent all of it on cigarettes and beer and fast food for—not me—but her and my little brother.

It had already been a month living with her, and she still hadn't gotten me the dresser that I had asked for, and when I brought it up, she told me that they were going to get my little brother a new dresser and give me his older one. I know I may sound like a brat, but I got upset because she had promised me that she was going to get ME a dresser. I literally didn't have one. Ever since I moved, I had been stacking up my clothes in laundry baskets or on top of my side table.

But this isn't even the tip of the iceberg. I have never had a good relationship with my mother, and if I wrote everything she's done to me down, we'd be here all day, so I'll just recite some little things that stood out to me when I lived with her again this year. She refused to give me a key and would leave me waiting outside for 10 to 20 minutes until her boyfriend got there almost every single day, and some nights, if I went and spent time at my father's house, she'd refuse to let me into the house at all. I had nothing at my father's house, but she would tell me that I could stay over there because she didn't want to deal with me. This happened three or four times before I just got tired of it and moved back to my father's house.

My mother refuses to take me to doctor's appointments, and the final straw was when I had asked her if I could not go to school that day and go to the doctor because I was so sick, and she flipped out—screaming and crying, telling me she was so overwhelmed and I'm always doing this.

I wish I was over-exaggerating.

She started panicking and yelling at me because I knocked on her door and asked her if she could take me to the doctor later that day. My mother is an alcoholic and extremely mentally unstable, so every conversation ends up being an unstoppable battle of wills, and I'm not saying I'm a saint—I am most certainly not. I am fully aware that we hurt each other, which is one of the biggest reasons why I just want to be done with her. I was tired of being screamed at every day, made out to be a demon of a child who can never do anything right, whose very existence overwhelms and exhausts her.

Then there's my dad. I recently moved back into his house, and now I'm reminded of all of the issues I had here. He's mentally stable, but he is always reminding me how expensive I am. I have never asked him anything and not heard about how much of a burden I am afterwards.

He comes home from work and plays video games until he goes to bed, and if I ask him to take me anywhere, I'm going to be made to feel like I am asking him to lasso the moon for me. It's mentally exhausting.

I haven't had a phone for months at a time because he doesn't pay for it. I haven't had a haircut in over a year because it's "too expensive." He refuses to take me places without going on an entire tangent about how "he never gets a day off" or how I "can never just make things easier for him."

I still don't have a driver's license because my stepmom lost my birth certificate, and instead of going and getting me another one—which I told him will only take like 15 minutes—he complains about it.

I still don't have a job because nobody can get in touch with me since I don't have a phone, and I've applied to six different places. I put my dad's number down, but he never answers the phone.

Both my mother and my father rarely cook dinner, and they both complain about taking me to the doctor. Today, my dad refused to go out and get more milk because "I always wait until the last possible minute to ask and he is tired from work." He gets out of work at three. It was six. The store is literally a two-minute drive from our house. And if I ask to walk? He'll refuse.

Thankfully, I have an amazing boyfriend who supports me and is willing to help me in any way he can, so I'm not completely cut off from the world, and I'm hoping to get a license as soon as possible. I know this probably doesn't have any legal stance, but my boyfriend is eighteen and lives in his own apartment. If I got emancipated, he said I could live with him and split the costs 50/50, at least until I am ready to live on my own. We made an agreement that I would no longer ask either of my parents for anything, and he would support me until I'm able to find a job and support myself, and he has. We are looking into getting me set up with a phone so I can finally get a job. I thought this might be important information to know—I'm not sure though haha.

I feel trapped in a home where I have no freedom, and yet I get berated because I ask for the bare minimum to keep me alive. I just want to be able to support myself and not consistently feel like I'm a burden for existing. I know this is what is best for me and my mental health.