When a parent signs for a minor

Whether a client under 18 can get tattooed or pierced at your shop depends on your state first, and then on you. When both say yes, your waiver form has a section the parent or guardian fills in and signs in person. This page covers what it asks, what your state decides, and where you turn it on.

Can a parent sign for a minor at my shop?

3 things decide it, in this order:

1. Your state's rule. Some states don't allow a tattoo under 18 at all, whatever a parent signs. Most let a parent sign for a piercing. Some set a minimum age, even with a parent, or keep certain spots off limits for a minor, like a nipple or genital piercing. A county or city can be stricter than its state.
2. Your switch. It's off until you turn it on, and there's one for tattooing and one for piercing, because they're 2 different rules.
3. The spot. For a piercing, the form turns away a spot your state keeps off limits for a minor.

To see what your state allows, open the compliance page, pick your state, and read Minors and Piercing a minor. Each quotes the rule.

Your waiver form takes 18 and over for a cosmetic tattoo, in every state.

What does the form ask when a minor signs?

When your client's age is under 18 and your shop takes minors for that work, a Parent or Guardian section opens on the form. The parent or guardian fills it in and signs it themselves, in person:

• Their full name, and how they're related to your client.
• Their own signature.
• A photo of their government photo ID, in place of your client's.

Where your state or county asks for more, the form asks for that too. It can be:

• A statement the parent ticks, in the exact words the rule sets.
• The minor's own ID, as well as the parent's.
• A photo of the birth certificate or guardianship papers.
• The other parent's written permission, where the rule wants both parents.
• Whether the minor is emancipated, where the state treats an emancipated minor as an adult. Then the minor signs for themselves, and brings the court decree.
• Whether the tattoo covers an existing one, where that's the only tattoo the state allows a minor.

The signed copy gives the parent's consent a page of its own, with what your state requires printed on it.

When your switch is off, a client under 18 is told they must be 18, and can't sign.

What is the ear question?

Some states write an ear piercing out of their rule for minors: the whole ear, or the lobe with no cartilage. Where yours does, you pierce minors, and the spot your client picks is an ear, the form asks one question under the spot, like "Is this an earlobe piercing, with no cartilage?" A yes takes your state's own requirements for a minor off that signing. The parent still consents and signs.

In some of those states, the ear is written out only when it's pierced with a single-use stud-and-clasp gun. There the question asks about the gun, and it's your switch, off until you turn it on: Ear piercing with a stud gun, under Who can sign. If you pierce with a needle, leave it off, and every minor's piercing follows your state's whole rule.

Where do I turn it on?

In your dashboard, open Settings → Waiver form → Who can sign. For each kind of work you do, it says what your state allows:

• Where your state doesn't allow it, it says so, with the rule, and there's no switch.
• Where your state allows it, there's a switch: We tattoo minors with a parent present, or We pierce minors with a parent present. Each is off until you turn it on.
• Where your state asks for more than a parent's signature, like a notarized form, each one is listed in the rule's words. Some of them happen outside your shop, and your form can't do them for you, so you tick each one to confirm it. The switch stays off until every one is ticked.

Also under Who can sign: Birth certificate or guardianship papers, to ask for a photo of it every time a parent signs. Where your state's rule names that proof, the form asks for it on its own, and Settings says so.

If your shop's state isn't set, Who can sign asks you to set it first, because every state answers this differently.

Who checks the ID and the age?

You do. Your waiver form takes a photo of the parent's ID, and of the minor's where your state asks. It doesn't check that an ID is real, or that the adult is the parent. Checking them the way your state requires, and deciding who you tattoo or pierce, is yours, as our terms say.