Post-secondary education: For the sake of completeness, filial responsibility laws.

_{(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)}

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I've been blogging about how, legally speaking, parents' compulsory obligation to support their children ends at age 18, but how there's at least some evidence of a social expectation that parents will continue providing material support at least for a while.

For the sake of completeness and symmetry, I ought to point out that some states have on the books a "filial responsibility law" which compels adult children to provide material support to indigent parents.

There's a little bit about this here 

Filial responsibility laws typically don't apply unless your parent has to accept financial support from the government or she incurs a nursing home or other medical bill that she has no possibility of paying. If she has no financial resources, you might be expected to pay for her care. The nursing home, hospital, government or a third party can file a lawsuit against you in states that allow it, seeking a judgment that would obligate you to pay your parent's bill.

The law gives courts some discretion when enforcing filial responsibility laws. If you're barely making ends meet financially, courts typically won't require you to impoverish yourself to pay for your parent's care. Likewise, if you're paying significant costs for your own child, such as college tuition, this may exempt you from being responsible for your parent as well.

... If your parent abused you or abandoned you as a child, the law allows that she's undeserving of your financial support. However, some states have statutory requirements for abandonment. In Pennsylvania, your parent must have abandoned you for at least 10 years before you reached age 18.

My state, Minnesota, repealed its filial responsibility law in 1974.  But filial responsibility laws remain on the books in many states: 

 In a 2002 article titled, “Filial Responsibility: Can the Legal Duty to Support Our Parents Be Effectively Enforced?” by Shannon Frank Edelstone, appearing in the Fall 2002 issue of the American Bar Association’s Family Law Quarterly, the author listed thirty states that had filial responsibility laws on the books. 

Those states were Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia. 

While each state’s laws vary, most provide that children have a duty to provide necessities for parents who cannot do so for themselves.

A recent Wall Street Journal article explored the question of being "on the hook for Mom's bills," describing a case where an adult son in Pennsylvania was ruled to owe more than $90,000 for his 65-year-old mother's hospital and nursing care bills after a car accident:

The ... family's experience serves as a warning for middle-aged children with parents who are racking up long-term-care bills. In many states, including Pennsylvania, the filial-support law doesn't require lack of cooperation or asset shielding on the children's part. They simply have to be deemed by a judge to have the means to pay the bill, Ms. Pearson says.

The best defense against such laws, elder-law experts say, is planning. "If your parents aren't multimillionaires, then you need to get some advice way early, maybe when they're 65," says Carolyn Rosenblatt, a San Francisco mediator, elder-law attorney and registered nurse. "By the time they're in their 80s, most people need some help. How would you pay for that?"

Among the possible strategies: buying long-term-care insurance before health problems begin or building an in-law unit that you could rent out, perhaps to a child in college or starting a first job, until your parents need it.

I'm not really sure whether it is relevant to the discussion.  But this is, I think, perhaps the flip side of considering whether parents should allow their adult children to live at home.

 

Comments

[Amber]

Hmm, I had not considered the other side of the coin. Am I the only one who finds this rather worrisome, given the generally spendthrift nature of the boomer generation?

I am reading and pondering all this data. Lots to think about!