Posted on 11/27/2006 7:58:14 AM PST by SmithL
All those baby boomers with aging parents should pay close attention to a recent court decision in California. An appeals court ruling in a nasty divorce in Placer County highlights the little known but significant legal obligation of adult children who, to the extent they are able, should support their indigent parents.
In the case before the appeals court, a divorcing wife disputed her husband's right to deduct from the proceeds of her share of community property the $12,000 he had spent to support his elderly, infirm mother. The wife called the support payments "an unauthorized gift of community funds." The trial court commissioner agreed with her. "You know as well as I do," Placer County Commissioner Colleen M. Nichols said in the opinion, "that you're under no legal obligation to pay for your parent's expenses just as you're under no obligation to pay for your child's expenses once they are over the age of 18."
But in a unanimous ruling that is binding on courts across California unless overturned by the state Supreme Court, the 3rd District Court of Appeal emphatically disagreed with Nichols. "Though not commonly known," Associate Justice Vance Raye wrote for a three-judge panel, "California is one of many states that have enacted filial responsibility laws imposing on adult children obligations akin to those imposed on parents with respect to minor children." With the exception of those circumstances where parents were known to have abandoned a child, the justice noted, "neglect of an indigent parent is punishable as a misdemeanor." Penal Code Section 270c specifically provides that "every adult child who, having the ability so to do, fails to provide necessary food, clothing, shelter or medical attendance for an indigent parent, is guilty of a misdemeanor."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
What the Ayn Rand crowd has to say?
I child owes his parents more than any employer "owes" a retirement plan or a health plan.
There is no logical reason other than the retention of valued employees as a business decision for employers to be responsible for their retirees.
Family ties, faith, and DEBT of love are the ethical reasons a child owes his parents.
It sounds like Commissioner Colleen needs to start reading the applicable statutes before she issues rulings.
While I don't disagree with the net result, it is yet another example of the Courts making law, when that is the purview of the Legislature.
I also think Baby Boomers get a bad rap. I don't know one of them that isn't voluntarily helping their parents while still paying college tuition for their kids.
My brother and sister predate the Baby Boomer years (born in the early 30's) and if they were supposed to be more generous towards out parents, let's get on record that this Baby Boomer (me) was alone in helping our parents. Some generalizations don't turn out as written.
TNT
What it will eventually lead to is the "quality of life" excuse for euthanisia of the elderly who become too much of a burden. It probably doesn't matter, though; in 15 to 20 years out, Sharia Law will probably have it covered.
I'm a first wave boomer, so are my brother and sister. We paid off mom's mortgage and all her debts and bought her a car after dad died.
It is a sad state of affairs when society needs a court ruling to obligate people to take care of their elderly parents.
Unlike conservatives, I don't speak for other objectivists, that would be insulting.
But this is an easy question, I'd say that one would have a moral obligation to help out their parents but no duty. certainly not one to be enforced by the law.
When you have children, you willingly take that obligation upon yourself, it's not the same however with your parents. I have several great aunts and uncles rights now that I don't speak to because they don't help to take care of their mother, my great-grandmother. They made their choice, I made mine and the law has no business getting involved.
Be careful where this will lead. While the moral obligation is there, once you establish state enforcement, you are going to get state funding. Look what the state pays for that first child-parent period of obligation. So now you will get the obligation/bailout in reverse. The state raises children, now it can ease people into the grave?
well to be fair, the case was part of a divorce where the wife didn't see why her husband's choice to fund his Ma should cut into her share of the assets.
Sorry, but boomers have earned their bad rap with full marks. Not all boomers, of course, but a large enough portion of that group, particularly some with enough financial resources to more than handle the job. Why do you think the nursing home industry is booming?
In the context of this divorce case, I think the third was correct. It was used to calculate alimony.
>>I also think Baby Boomers get a bad rap. I don't know one of them that isn't voluntarily helping their parents while still paying college tuition for their kids. <<
Don't take this personally, but apparently you have a very small circle of acquaintences.
I think the next thing we will see is parent support laws (just like child support).
Isn't the Nanny State great :)
" Penal Code Section 270c specifically provides that "every adult child who, having the ability so to do, fails to provide necessary food, clothing, shelter or medical attendance for an indigent parent, is guilty of a misdemeanor."
The court was not making law in this instance. Apparently you missed the last sentence.
This is where the morals of society can put pressure on people to act without the enforcement of government.
That said, it is a very complicated matter when you had no power over anything for the first 18years of the relationship...and then not much for the next 40years either as bad and very bad choices are made.....and then BANG! -- you are stuck with the tab to deal with all the consequences until the person dies. This will boost support for awful things like euthanasia unless humans can stop being human.
Get rid of the confiscatory income taxes so that people keep what they earn and can afford to support their aging parents instead of a bloated government, and I "Might" agree with this idiot judge.
Frankly I think the judge should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.
Idiots
Big ol can-o-worms. My first reaction is that while people have a moral obligation to help their parents but I don't want the state imposing the obligation.
The United States of America is the highest taxed nation on earth with the least return in benefits and services per tax dollar.
This case illustrates an emerging movement that is getting more and more press as the baby boomer generation passes into retirement and the governments at all levels forcast an unfunded liabilty in social security and medicare requirements.
This emerging movement can be appropriately termed as "Put the expense of the elderly onto the backs of their children or next of kin".
It sounds absolutely Republican in spirit but only if the movement was accompanied by offsets in government spending and taxation. The latter offsets I predict will never materialize unless there is a revolt.
The movement will happen incrementally so as not to surprise or shock the public. There will be small movements such as retirement age changing from 65 to 67, then 70, then 72 and so on. There will be attempts by Republicans to cut children who care for their parents a tax break, but this tax break will fade as government taxation and spending becomes more and more burdensome.
I predict the demographics will force revolt in year 2019. By then all taxpayers will have heard of and understood the 'Fair Tax' solution. It will pass by then and possibly earlier.
All of this could have been avoided had the government stayed out of socializing the American economic system. Years before the Great Depression it was common for adults to care for their elderly parents or at least for charity groups to care for those without functional families. The idea of personal responsibility and obligation was quite different then.
Instead what we have had for decades is a tax, spend and promise policy that has taxed baby boomers to a rate not seen anywhere else on earth. Now all those tax dollars are lost as the government begins abandoning the promises it made.
Deadbeat government is on the way.
But yet, a female "parent" has every right to kill her unborn child on demand... under the guise of choice... while the same rights are not granted to the male donor, who is compelled for 18 years or more to be a "parent".
I am sure glad the government is around to clarify all these things for me.
How much you want to bet the guy's lawyer talked him into it, too? "Hey, that money you need to send your mom? Take it from the joint checking and then your wife covers half of it!" And it worked, too!
"It is a sad state of affairs when society needs a court ruling to obligate people to take care of their elderly parents."
True.
"Take it from the joint checking and then your wife covers half of it!"
That's about standard procedure in California marriage and divorce laws. The sick part is an ex would actually hold his former spouse to this.
Does anyone has some info on Ayn Rand parents or children?
1. Because people are living longer with medical conditions that require daily professional care. A few decades ago those same conditions would have killed them.
2. Because families are spread all over the country. Kids grow and relocate to other areas and where there once was several siblings in the same town to help care for an aged parent, now there may only be one, or none.
What of a parent who has given their child nothing but merry hell for years? I would hate to have my mother find me years from now and expect me to take care of her. I have heard enough of, "I need you" "I'm disowning you" in my adult life so far.
Elder/Childcare is perfectly consistent with objectivism, as long as one is doing it voluntarily.
Rand's dad was a pharmacist in Czarist Russia. Don't recall what her mom did outside the home. Ayn had no children.
I agree. The individual who gave me a hard time had apparently had a very rocky relationship with his parents, and insisted on projecting his issues onto me.
I think she should have paid half. My late husband did many things for my mom simply because he liked helping her when she needed it. She is 102 now and in a nursing home. Everyone loves her. He died in July.
Though I think we are taxed way too high, what is your proof on this? There are numerous countries with higher taxes than us. Look at virtually all of Europe.
Not unless the taxpayers (me, for example) have to pick up the cost for elderly parents (who I don't even know) of particularly selfish adult children (who I don't even know). Then, I'm fine and dandy with it being "enforced by the law", thank you.
I do. My husband's parents, my parents, my aunts and uncles. You know what help my husband and I received from our parents for college? Nothing, zero, zip, nada. Two years ago my husband and I nearly went bankrupt when we took in my ailing mother and took out a loan to pay off her bills.
Who proceeded to blow $150 of our grocery budget (2 months in a row!) on cookies and ding-dongs and donuts because she didn't like my limitations on such things. Who sniped about my cooking and how I arranged my furniture and how we raised our children. There was a lot more. I still love her, but she is now living with a different relative and will never again live with us. I'll put her in a home first.
And I won't pay for it. Period.
The confusion comes from using ONLY the federal tax as a base for comparison. If you add all taxes (state, sales, property, local, social security etc ...) than the US taxes are not so different from taxes in Sweden.
I'd go to jail rather than support my parents. I'm *way* too compassionate in most areas, but I feel NO obligation to pay the way for people who feel entitled to other people's money and who did everything possible to screw up their own lives make themselves destitute. They're not dragging me down with them.
I'll front my mom some money for medical bills or get her some groceries, but that's about it.
Don't forget, it is sometimes a BAD thing to give too much. If you take away all motivation for success you end up with a couch potato who feels entitled to everything *you* own and will *never* take responsibility for their own lives.
So why don't you just say that having the government steal from you to give to others is wrong in the first place. All you're doing is justifying the states unjust use of force against those ungrateful children by noting it's unjust use of force against you.
This is not the whim of an "idiot judge," (though lord knows there are plenty of them out there). This panel of judges is merely enforcing law as enacted by the CA legislature and presumably signed by the governor.
In this case, the individual was and wanted to provide financial support for a needy parent and the greedy ex wanted it instead.
I would never leave my dad or either of my grandmothers high and dry, but my parents made it clear to me that the debt I owe them is payable to my children (when I have them).
Fortunately, my family has enough assets and insurance that we should be able to weather a crisis; if I had to choose between a nursing home for my elders or college for my children, that would be a cruel choice, but not one I would want a judge to make for me.
"neglect of an indigent parent is punishable as a misdemeanor."
WOW!!! I kinda like the idea of children getting back to taking care of their parents. However, a misdemeanor??? I don't know if I want the government dictating this. I guess the boomers will have another similiar situation. Not only do they take drugs, have abortions, buy with credit...now they can add criminal to the list. lol. Yes my parents are Boomers (both 60 this year) and I will take care of them and actually they did take care of their parents not all of them do. As an X'er I know that I will and my generation will as well.
Do I need to?
As long as scumbag government works the way it does, then I am all for court rulings like this one.
Because in this case at least, government (court) meddling reduces my burden for once.
The law is just as idiotic as the judge then. Just because it's a law doesn't make it right.
In today's world, the concept of "support" shouldn't be a factor in divorces either, especially with Women being able to earn as much if not more than their husbands/soon to be exes.
Idiocy is idiocy, be it in law, on a bench, or in divorce court. But then I don't expect the sheeple to understand that concept.
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