Hayley Mills lost 90 percent of her earnings from The Parent Trap and her other Disney films. Not to taxes. Not to her parents. To what she now calls a "crook" financial advisor.

The story is depressingly familiar. Child star makes millions. Parents trust professional advisor. Advisor makes terrible investments, takes excessive fees, or simply steals. By the time the child is old enough to notice, the money's gone.

Jackie Coogan went through it in the 1930s, leading California to pass the Coogan Law requiring a percentage of child actors' earnings be held in trust. Gary Coleman was robbed by his parents and advisors in the 1980s. Macaulay Culkin had to legally emancipate from his parents to protect his Home Alone fortune.

Now we add Hayley Mills to the list. Different decade, same pattern.

The Coogan Law was supposed to prevent this. But it only protects 15 percent of earnings, and enforcement is spotty. Financial advisors operate in a lightly regulated space where fiduciary duty is optional and conflicts of interest are common. Parents of child stars are often unsophisticated about money and vulnerable to anyone who sounds authoritative.

And child actors themselves have no power. They're generating millions while legally unable to sign contracts, make financial decisions, or fire the people stealing from them. By the time they age into legal adulthood, the damage is done.

Mills is now 80 years old, looking back on a childhood that generated enormous wealth and left her with almost nothing. She's not asking for sympathy - she's had a successful career and life beyond her child star years. But she's right to be angry, and right to speak publicly about what happened.

Because it keeps happening. Every generation of child actors includes someone who got robbed. The laws supposedly protecting them are inadequate. The industry that profits from their work does virtually nothing to ensure they actually keep their earnings.