Article on Losing Loved Ones and Your Livelihood: Re-Evaluating Filial Responsibility Laws

Kara Wenzl recently published an Article entitled, Losing Loved Ones and Your Livelihood: Re-Evaluating Filial Responsibility Laws, 29 Loy. Consumer L. Rev. 391-409 (2017). Provided below is an abstract of the Article:

Imagine that you just received news that your mother, who had been living in a nursing home nearby for the past year, passed away. While she was in the nursing home, you visited her a few times a week and bought her new clothes and toiletry items whenever she needed them. You work full-time and are raising two children of your own. Shortly after your mother’s funeral, the nursing home where she lived serves you with a lawsuit. The nursing home is suing you for your mother’s outstanding bill totaling $ 90,000.00.

This hypothetical may seem unrealistic and unbelievable, but it is unfortunately a very real situation that more and more people face every day as states begin, with increasing regularity, to enforce filial responsibility statutes. For the reasons addressed in this hypothetical, along with several others I will discuss later in this article, filial responsibility laws should be eliminated across the United States. Filial responsibility statutes contradict the most basic and important policy goals of the judicial system, including efforts to promote familial relations, limit litigation, and uphold uniform laws across the nation. Further, filial responsibility laws implicate important gender issues and discrimination.

This article will be divided into eight parts. Part II will explain filial responsibility, at what point the filial responsibility arises, and how the laws are implemented. Part III will discuss the history of filial responsibility, including its origin, its application in America, and the recent resurgence of filial laws in United States courts. Part IV will offer an explanation for the recent resurfacing of filial responsibility laws, and will include a discussion on increased long-term care costs and decreased income to elderly individuals. Part V will address the burden that women, specifically, face when filial responsibility arises. Part VI will address the negative effects of enforcing filial responsibility laws in the United States, and how that enforcement contradicts important policy goals. Part VII will propose solutions to problems that filial responsibility laws attempt to address. Lastly, part VIII will conclude with a synopsis of where current filial responsibility laws leave consumers, and how eliminating filial responsibility laws will benefit society at large as well as improve familial relations and individual welfare.