A 16-year-old gets her first part-time job at a local franchise bakery, signs the new-hire paperwork her manager hands her, and works for about a month before being fired by text message. A few weeks later, a letter arrives in the mail with a copy of a non-compete agreement she’d signed buried in the new-hire packet — a non-compete telling her she can’t work for any company that sells baked goods anywhere in the state for two years. The story sounds absurd. It is also a fact pattern that comes up on r/legaladvice often enough that the response thread practically writes itself. The short answer: a non-compete signed by a minor in Michigan, attached to a minimum-wage frosting job, and forbidding work across an entire industry isn’t going to be enforced by any court. The long answer involves three layers of law working together, and walking through them is useful — because the same analysis applies in almost every state and for almost every minimum-wage non-compete a teenager has been asked to sign in the last five years.

The Reddit thread that triggered this article

A Michigan parent posted on r/legaladvice asking what to do about a non-compete his daughter had signed at a local franchise bakery:

“My daughter (age 16) signed a non-compete agreement at a local franchise bakery. She worked there maybe a month and the manager fired her by text. We got a letter in the mail with a copy of an extremely vague non-compete contract. We are in Michigan. Her job was a ‘froster.’ She’s not even looking for another job, but the fact they sent this letter stating she can’t work for any company that sells baked goods for 2 years seems absurd.”

— Reddit user, r/legaladvice, Michigan, November 2025

The thread drew more than 4,800 upvotes and the top legal-advice comments converged on the same answer: this non-compete is unenforceable for at least three independent reasons, and the family’s right action is to keep the documentation and otherwise live their lives normally. The reasoning is worth understanding because the same three doctrines protect every minor in nearly every U.S. state from this exact kind of overreach.

Layer one: contracts signed by minors are voidable

The common-law rule, in place across all 50 U.S. states, is that a contract signed by a minor is voidable at the minor’s option. The minor can elect to perform the contract or to disaffirm it at any time during minority and for a reasonable period after reaching majority. The doctrine traces back to centuries of common-law cases and remains intact in modern American law with two narrow exceptions: contracts for “necessaries” (food, shelter, clothing, basic medical care) and contracts the legislature has specifically made enforceable against minors (insurance, certain banking products, student loans in some states, performance contracts in some entertainment-industry states).

A non-compete is not a contract for necessaries. There’s no statute in Michigan or any other state that has carved out non-competes as enforceable against minors. The Michigan rule on minors and contracts is settled and aligns with the broader American common-law approach. The Michigan Compiled Laws on age of majority and capacity set the threshold at 18, meaning anyone under 18 retains the common-law right to disaffirm a non-necessaries contract.

The disaffirmance is informal. The minor (or her parent on her behalf) doesn’t have to file paperwork or get a court order. Disaffirmance can be made by any clear communication — including by simply ignoring the contract and refusing to perform it. A minor who signed a non-compete and chooses to disaffirm it can walk into the next baked-goods company in town and accept a frosting job there. If the bakery sues, the minor’s disaffirmance defense is dispositive on the contract claim. The defense survives even after the minor turns 18 if the disaffirmance is exercised within a reasonable time after majority.

Layer two: Michigan’s specific non-compete statute

Even if the minor’s signature were enforceable, Michigan law imposes specific limits on the scope of non-compete agreements. The governing statute is MCL § 445.774a, which permits non-compete agreements only when they (a) protect the employer’s “reasonable competitive business interests,” (b) are reasonable in duration, geographic area, and the type of employment or line of business covered, and (c) impose restrictions no broader than necessary to protect that interest.

Michigan courts apply the statute case by case. Some patterns are settled:

  • An employer’s “reasonable competitive business interest” means trade secrets, customer relationships built at company expense, specialized training paid for by the employer, or confidential business information the employee was given access to. It does not include “we don’t want our employees working for competitors.” A frosting job at a franchise bakery doesn’t typically involve trade secrets or specialized training; the worker isn’t given access to confidential customer relationships beyond knowing the names of the customers who order birthday cakes.
  • Duration of two years is generally on the long end of what Michigan courts will enforce, and only for employees in genuinely sensitive positions (senior management, sales with customer relationships, employees with deep trade-secret access). For a part-time minimum-wage role held for a month, two years is unreasonable on its face.
  • “Any company that sells baked goods” is an industry-wide restriction. Michigan courts strike industry-wide restrictions in non-competes for low-wage and entry-level positions because they prevent the worker from earning a living in her trained field — the kind of harm the underlying statute is designed to prevent.

The Michigan statute also gives courts the power to “limit the agreement to render it reasonable” — meaning a court can rewrite an overbroad non-compete to be enforceable in a narrower form, rather than striking it entirely. This is called “blue penciling.” In practice, courts blue-pencil non-competes for senior employees with clear protectable interests; they tend to strike non-competes against low-wage entry-level workers entirely because no version of the restriction is reasonable.

Layer three: consideration and the firing-by-text problem

Every contract requires consideration — something of value exchanged between the parties. In the employment context, the employee’s consideration is her labor; the employer’s consideration is the wages, benefits, and continued employment. A non-compete is generally enforceable only when supported by adequate consideration: continued employment (in jurisdictions that consider that sufficient), a signing bonus, a promotion, a raise, or other genuine value provided in exchange for the worker’s agreement not to compete.

When an employer terminates the employee within a month — particularly by text message — the consideration argument cuts hard against the employer. A reasonable court reads the situation as: the employer extracted a non-compete signature, paid the worker minimum wage for four weeks, fired her, and now wants to enforce a two-year industry-wide restriction. The consideration was a month of minimum-wage employment. The restriction is two years of lost industry-wide opportunity. The disparity makes the consideration legally inadequate to support the restriction in most states.

This consideration analysis applies in addition to the minority defense and the Michigan-statute scope defense. The three defenses stack: each independently defeats the non-compete, and together they make it functionally certain that no Michigan court would enforce this agreement.

The federal FTC non-compete rule — where it stands as of 2026

A federal-level development is worth understanding here even though it doesn’t change the analysis above. In April 2024, the Federal Trade Commission issued a final rule banning most non-compete agreements nationwide. The rule was scheduled to take effect on September 4, 2024. Before the effective date, a federal district court in the Northern District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction blocking the rule (Ryan, LLC v. FTC). The FTC appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the rule has been on hold through 2024, 2025, and into 2026.

As of mid-2026, the rule is still in litigation and has not taken effect. The FTC’s Non-Compete Rule landing page tracks the current procedural status. If the rule survives appellate review, it would void most existing non-competes nationwide — including the one in the Reddit user’s case. Even without the federal rule, the three-layer state-law analysis above is sufficient to defeat the bakery’s non-compete.

States that have banned non-competes outright or for specific worker categories

Beyond the federal rule’s uncertain status, several states have moved on their own. Worth knowing because they shape what’s portable from one state to another:

  • California, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma: Non-competes are largely unenforceable as to ordinary employees, including minors.
  • Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington, Washington D.C.: Income thresholds — non-competes are unenforceable for workers below specified compensation levels. A minimum-wage worker in any of these states would be below the threshold.
  • Multiple states with minor-specific bans: Some states have specifically banned non-competes against minors regardless of compensation level. Michigan does not have a minor-specific ban, but the general voidability of contracts signed by minors substitutes for one.

For comprehensive coverage of non-compete enforceability across all 50 states, our employment contract lawyer guide walks through what’s negotiable in employment agreements generally, including the state-by-state breakdown.

What the parent should actually do

The top-voted legal-advice comments converged on the same practical recommendation: keep the documentation, don’t act on the non-compete, and otherwise live normally. The reasoning is sound:

  • Keep the documents. The non-compete itself, any letter from the employer, any text messages, the original new-hire packet. If the company ever attempts to enforce — which is extremely unlikely — the documents are the defense.
  • Don’t comply with the non-compete. The daughter can apply to any other baked-goods company in Michigan without legal jeopardy. The minority defense alone defeats the non-compete; she doesn’t need the franchise’s permission.
  • Don’t proactively sue. There’s no need to file an action for declaratory judgment that the non-compete is unenforceable. The cost of litigation exceeds the cost of just ignoring the document. If the franchise ever sues, the parent retains an employment-law attorney at that point — and most employment-law attorneys take these cases on a fee-shift or contingency basis because the franchise’s case is so weak.
  • Optional: file with the state attorney general or the Department of Labor. If the franchise has a pattern of imposing unenforceable non-competes on minor workers, a regulator complaint is appropriate. The Michigan Office of the Attorney General accepts consumer-protection and labor-related complaints.
  • Optional: contact the franchise corporate office. The local franchisee may have imposed the non-compete without corporate knowledge. Corporate has a strong incentive to direct franchisees away from unenforceable practices that generate negative publicity.

The Better Business Bureau is, as one top-voted comment in the thread put it, “boomer Yelp” — it has no governmental authority and a BBB complaint isn’t going to produce a legal outcome. Skip it.

The broader trend: low-wage non-competes are under increasing legal scrutiny

The fact that a franchise bakery is imposing a two-year industry-wide non-compete on a 16-year-old part-time froster is not an isolated incident. National-chain employers in food service, retail, gig work, and home health care have routinely included non-competes in their new-hire paperwork over the last two decades, often without regard to enforceability under state law. The pattern has been the focus of FTC enforcement, state attorney-general investigations, and academic research showing that low-wage workers who are subject to non-competes earn less and have fewer career-advancement options than comparable workers who aren’t bound.

The legal direction across the country is toward narrower enforceability of non-competes, including outright bans for low-income workers and for minors specifically. Whatever happens with the federal FTC rule on appeal, the state-level trend is clear and the practical impact for the Reddit user’s daughter is the same: the non-compete is not legally enforceable, and her father’s instinct to treat it as absurd is the right one.

Bottom line

A non-compete signed by a 16-year-old, attached to a minimum-wage part-time bakery job, terminated by text after a month, restricting all baked-goods employment for two years statewide — fails three independent legal tests. The minority of the signer makes the contract voidable. Michigan’s non-compete statute strikes industry-wide restrictions against low-wage workers as unreasonable. The lack of meaningful consideration (a month of minimum-wage employment) cannot support a two-year industry-wide restriction. The daughter is free to work anywhere she wants. The father’s instinct to keep the documentation and otherwise live normally is the legally correct response. No court in Michigan would enforce this agreement, and the franchise’s most-likely outcome of sending the letter is that it generated a viral Reddit thread and a TCL article walking through why low-wage non-competes don’t survive scrutiny.

Frequently asked questions

Can a 16-year-old be legally bound by a non-compete agreement?

No. Under the common-law rule that applies in every U.S. state, contracts signed by minors are voidable at the minor’s option for non-necessaries. Non-competes are not contracts for necessaries. A minor (or her parent on her behalf) can disaffirm the contract at any time during minority and for a reasonable time after turning 18. The disaffirmance can be made by clear communication — including simply ignoring the contract and refusing to perform it.

What makes a non-compete enforceable in Michigan?

Under MCL § 445.774a, a non-compete is enforceable only if it (a) protects the employer’s reasonable competitive business interest, (b) is reasonable in duration, geographic area, and type of employment covered, and (c) is no broader than necessary to protect that interest. A two-year industry-wide restriction against a minimum-wage entry-level worker fails all three prongs. Michigan courts can blue-pencil overbroad agreements, but they generally strike non-competes against low-wage workers entirely because no version is reasonable.

What’s the FTC non-compete rule and is it in effect?

The Federal Trade Commission issued a final rule in April 2024 banning most non-competes nationwide, scheduled to take effect September 4, 2024. A federal district court in Texas preliminarily blocked the rule before it took effect, and the FTC’s appeal is pending in the Fifth Circuit. As of mid-2026, the rule remains stayed and has not taken effect. State-level non-compete law continues to govern.

Should we sue the bakery proactively to confirm the non-compete is unenforceable?

No. The cost of a declaratory judgment action exceeds the cost of simply ignoring the document. Disaffirmance of a minor’s contract is informal and doesn’t require court action. If the bakery ever sues to enforce, the minority defense and Michigan-statute scope defense are dispositive on the merits, and most employment-law attorneys take these cases on a fee-shift or contingency basis because the bakery’s case is weak.

Can my daughter work for another bakery while this non-compete is hanging over her?

Yes. The non-compete is unenforceable for the three reasons outlined above. She can apply to any other baked-goods company in Michigan without legal jeopardy. The non-compete creates no obligation she has to comply with, and her disaffirmance of the contract is effective whether she states it explicitly or just refuses to perform.

What if the franchise threatens to enforce the non-compete?

If the franchise sends additional threatening letters or takes any action to enforce — for example, contacting a new employer to demand the daughter be fired — retain an employment-law attorney in Michigan. The franchise’s letter and any follow-up correspondence is evidence for the eventual litigation. Most employment attorneys take cases like this on a fee-shift basis because Michigan’s non-compete statute allows fee recovery for the prevailing party in many circumstances and the franchise’s case is structurally weak.

Sources

Featured image: photo by Declan Sun on Unsplash.

This article is general legal information about non-compete agreements signed by minors and is not legal advice. Non-compete law is state-specific and rapidly changing. If a minor in your family has signed a non-compete agreement and the employer is attempting to enforce it, contact an employment-law attorney in your state for case-specific evaluation. Most employment-law attorneys offer free initial consultations.