Hey there. I'm a guy quite a bit over twenty. I'm am currently together with a 15 year old girl. We're not simply dating, but very serious about each other. She has shown me a level of maturity that cannot be rivaled by even college-going women, and I know that with the proper influences and caring, she will become even better and more intelligent as time goes on.
The problem I am encountering is that while I love this girl very much and she loves me just as much, her mother is opposed to us even knowing and seeing each other. If we were just standard friends, it'd probably be the same. I have enough clear insight to know that the feelings that we have for each other are very heartfelt and sincere. Plus there's the fact that I am an older guy, and while I have intentionally not dated anyone / had a girlfriend in the past, I have quite a bit of "life experience" that helps the two of us out.
The mother intends to separate us when she finds out I'm 23. She's intent on seeing my driver's license next time she sees me. I'm sure if I spoke to her and convinced her I'm not just a sex-crazed male just looking for young blood, all would be fine. However, she is of Mexican descent and doesn't speak the best English, making it hard to properly convey any point of mine to her. This makes talking to her in my main language (English) slightly out of the question. In her own home, when I'm around, she speaks exclusively in Spanish unless addressing me directly. I find this to be very rude, coupled with the fact that she mostly ignores myself and her daughter until it is time to send me home. She doesn't even ask me to leave, she yells from across the house to her daughter (in Spanish) that "it's time". Because of things like this, I don't feel that she wants to even work with us and try to take us seriously.
For bonus information, her mother smothers her child, not listening to her or taking her seriously (which is strange, considering she's so intelligent and has so much to say), not giving her a level of freedom to even stay out for a single night (as if "forbidden things" done at night cannot be done during the day even less conspicuously). I would love to know some way I can talk some sense into her. The mother and the girl's sister assault her with insults and negative comments which almost ruin any self-esteem she's built up. Last time this happened, I was in the same house. After she took a verbal beating for making a mistake, I was the only one there for her to cry on. I was the only one who didn't make her feel stupid, dumb, not worthy of living. While that gave me an awesome feeling of being able to help her, I do NOT want stuff like this to continue happening to her.
In the end, what I would like to know is, from a knowledgeable legal standpoint, what are the girl's rights to go out and make her decisions in Arizona at the ages of 15, 16, and 17? This includes leaving the house, the mother's ability to block her from seeing me, etc. I would like some serious answers, and if you have anyone that you know that is knowledgeable in United States and/or Arizona law, please direct them or simply their answers to this thread. It'd be very painful at this point to only get to see her one a month or less on a secret basis, and as an intelligent person, I do not believe that it should be up to the mother to make a blanket decision about who her 15 year old daughter sees, especially when the mother is so unwilling to know the person / people in question. Any general advice will also be helpful, not just legal advice.
Thank you in advance.