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Adult Children Are Not Responsible For Their Parents' Bills
 The Axiom Of Responsibility Shocking, but true: you could be held liable for your parent's financial obligations. "'Filial support' or 'filial responsibility' -- the term often used to describe an adult child's obligation to a parent" has become the legal basis for lawsuits brought by nursing homes against adult children for their parents' unpaid nursing home bills. ("Pay Your Parents' Bills Or Else") The idea that adult children should be held legally responsible for their parents' welfare dates back to 17th-century England and carried over to colonial America. Today, some form of filial support remains on the books in 30 states but, [. . .] only Pennsylvania and South Dakota have recent track records of health care providers using the law to sue patients' children. It's unclear whether nursing facilities in other states will ever employ the law in a similar fashion. There aren't words strong enough to adequately express our opposition to these laws and the idea of "filial responsibility." According to Magna Sententia, you -- and only you -- are responsible for yourself once you reach 18 years of age. You are responsible for the financial decisions you make during your adult years: whether or not you save, live within your means, or prepare for your retirement years. How you go about doing this (or if you do this at all) is your business. If you fall on hard times and are not adequately prepared, it is no one's fault but your own. Please understand: If you want to help your parents in their time of need, by all means, do it. Forcing you to come to your parents' aid, however, is entirely different: To legally burden you, the adult child, with your parents' bills is outrageous! You didn't make your parents' financial decisions for them, so why should you be liable for their debts? Also, consider the numbers of adult children who are estranged from their parents for good reason. Many times, this estrangement is the result of years and years of mistreatment, and this type of legal obligation would be an incredible burden on those who, in our opinion, have already suffered enough. "Filial support" or "filial responsibility" is not a matter of taking care of your parents or loving them enough to help them out. It's about making individuals responsible for something that isn't their responsibility. Anna and Ellie Sherise
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