How to Read These Numbers
Child performers earn under a legal regime most adults never encounter, and the money questions are almost always about custody of the earnings rather than the size of them. This is not a list of who got rich and who went broke. It is an account of who legally holds a child’s money, how much of it the law actually protects, and what happens when the arrangement fails.
1. Jackie Coogan – The Case That Made the Law
Jackie Coogan starred opposite Charlie Chaplin in The Kid in 1921 and became one of the biggest stars of the silent era. Under the law of the time, a child’s earnings belonged outright to the parents. His had spent them.
Coogan sued. The result was the California Child Actor’s Bill of 1939, universally called the Coogan Law, and it is the single most consequential piece of financial regulation in entertainment (The Hollywood Reporter).
2. What the Coogan Law Actually Requires
It is narrower than most people assume. The law requires 15 per cent of a child performer’s gross earnings to be placed in a protected trust account that only the child can access, from the age of eighteen (The Hollywood Reporter).
The other 85 per cent is not protected. It is intended to cover taxes, commissions, fees and job-related expenses – and in practice it remains under adult control. A child star with enormous gross earnings is guaranteed, by law, only a sixth of them.
3. Macaulay Culkin – The Story That Is Usually Told Wrong
The received version is that Culkin emancipated himself from his parents. He has said that is not what happened. What he did was have his parents’ names removed from his trust fund and an independent executor appointed to manage it, during a custody dispute in which the trust itself was contested (Variety).
The distinction matters: he did not dissolve the family relationship, he removed the money from its reach. His trust survived intact, which is the main reason he is not a cautionary tale. See our profile of Macaulay Culkin for the earnings behind it.
4. When It Goes to Court
Disputes between young performers and their parents over money became common enough to form a recognisable category of litigation (The Hollywood Reporter). The accounts themselves have been contested too: child actors won an appeal against Bank of America over fees charged on Coogan trust accounts (The Hollywood Reporter).
5. The Law Catches Up With the Internet
The Coogan Law was written for film sets and covers employment. It did not cover children appearing in their parents’ online content, where there is no employer at all.
That gap is now closing. Illinois passed a law in 2023 entitling child influencers to a share of earnings from content featuring them (NPR), and California’s Assembly Bill 1880 extended Coogan protections to minors working as influencers and content creators (The Hollywood Reporter).
What This Means for Any Child-Star Net Worth Figure
Two things follow, and they apply to every figure of this kind on this site or anywhere else.
First, a child performer’s reported earnings and their retained wealth are different numbers, and the legal floor is 15 per cent. Second, the protection depends entirely on enforcement, and reporting suggests some states have been weakening child labour rules rather than strengthening them (Forbes). Any estimate of what a former child star kept should be read with both facts in view.