If Your Parents Can’t Pay Their Bills, You May Have To

[FarCenter]

A Pennsylvania man got some unpleasant news when he found out a nursing home was sticking him with a bill for $93,000 for his mother’s medical care.
- Pennsylvania’s “filial support law”can make children liable for parents’ bills
- Twenty-eight other states have similar laws
- First known filial support case with large liability but no fault

Parents can spend a fortune feeding, clothing and educating their children. Now, it’s time for the kids to give back, says the Pennsylvania law which is being used to hold children liable for their parents’ expensive medical bills.

John Pittas, a 47-year-old restaurant owner, has found himself staring at a bill for $92,943.41 for his mother’s stint in a rehab center after she broke both legs in a car accident and didn’t have her Medicaid coverage in order. Maryann Pittas, who now lives in Greece, is considered indigent by the state because her only income is Social Security and her husband’s Veteran’s Administration benefit.

That means the rehab center can sue her children under a previously obscure filial support law that can hold kids responsible for mom and dad’s debts.

http://www.businessinsider.com/if-your-parents-cant-pay-their-bills-you-may-have-to-2012-5

[KT2000]

1. Ryan's budget has something like this

guess they want it to go federal.

[Major Nikon]

2. Debtors' prisons can't be far behind

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. WHEN THE GOP ENDS THE FEDERAL MANDATE UNDER MECIAID THE KIDS WILL BE FORCED TO PAY.

Newt Gingrich came close to eliminating the federal mandate under Medicaid around 1995. Clinton vetoed the federal funding bill and the new legislation left "devolution" to the states out of the new bill.

The GOP wants to eliminate the federal mandate and send Medicaid back to the states. That will open up the ability of the states to pass "filial responsibility" laws. What will happen is that it will allow them to give the bill to the children and even the grandchildren for long term care. It will allow the states to file liens on property and garnish wages of the children and maybe even the grandchildren to pay for the care.

This horror is one horror that Romney will bring on the populace. It goes beyond the Ryan budget.

[GarroHorus]

4. This will have dire consequences for the economy.

Because of current debtor laws and how long debts have life, my father, who died last year and who I was estranged from for over two decades, may have left me debts of thousands, tens of thousands, or potentially even hundreds of thousands, all for no other reason than the fact that he inseminated my mother!

[dana_b]

15. I know

and that's absolutely sickening to think of. I am in the same situation as my dad is alive but I haven't had a relationship with him in over 35 years (I'm in my mid forties). I would be livid if something like this were to happen to my brothers, sister and I.

When my mom and step dad died in the mid nineties, they left behind tens of thousands of dollars of medical debt but it never affected us. We live in California too. I have a feeling this all may change.

[Petrushka]

24. When my father died, I couldn't believe who tried to hit me up for his only debt: His bookie!

No shit!

[Liberal_in_LA]

53. .

[Petrushka]

56. That was my first reaction too . . . but . . . then it became the bookies' reaction when . . .

. . . I told him that, if I wasn't mistaken, his bookmaking was illegal and if he continued to persist in his demand, I'd seriously consider pointing out the location of his (**ahem**) business to Federal authorities.

[left is right]

27. Is there any provision for the state proving

paternity before you have to pay his bills?

[GarroHorus]

5. States with this evil law

Here's an interactive map for states than can push debt off onto the genetic descendents of debtors:

http://assets.aarp.org/www.aarp.org_/articles/bulletin/interactive/filialpiety/index.html

[grasswire]

10. fascinating, thanks. n/t

[CTyankee]

11. When the reality of this kind of law comes home to people, they will revolt, big time.

You can bet the Tea Baggers won't get on board with it...talk is cheap. Paying thru the nose is painful...

[Petrushka]

25. Thank you! It's interesting to note the difference between, say, WV, OH, & PA laws. (eom)

[ecstatic]

38. Thanks for sharing. nt

[snooper2]

39. That's pretty interesting it's a mix of red and blue states...

One of those cases where both parties are fucking their constituents..

[renate]

47. thanks for this map!

I wonder what happens when the parents are residents of a state with a filial piety law and the children are not.

Edited to add that I adore my parents, but my husband had no relationship with his dad and it would have been absurd for him to pay his father's bills.

[magical thyme]

58. you wouldn't believe how fast I hit that site when I first read this article

I've been estranged from my parents for over 25 years. When I had just turned 22 and moved back to PA, I got a letter from the IRS. Apparently my father paid for my college graduation gift by listing me as a 1099 employee at his company. He took my "wages" and left me with the tax bill, including interest, penalties and threat of jail! Of course, the entire extended family hates me because I'm so "spoiled" and don't appreciate all they did for me.

Fortunately, he's a resident of Az, my mother's gone, and both my sisters (the one he "disowned" and the "daddy's girl&quot are in non-filial states, as am I.

By the time any laws get changed at the federal level, he'll be gone too.

But man do I feel for the rest of you. This is an outrage. What other 3rd world nightmares to they plan to foist on us?!? Seriously, is there any economy- and life-destroying action they won't try to shove down our throats?

[woo me with science]

6. This will make people commit suicide.

People will not want to burden their children.

Occupy. Now.

[HiPointDem]

8. or murder.

[woo me with science]

9. You're right. nt

[marlakay]

7. Someone told me 30 states have laws

Like this. I think it is crazy. What if you had a rough childhood, finally make a life for yourself after years of grief and then get hit again? I don't see this as fair.

[Kalidurga]

12. That is what I was thinking...

I think it would be especially cruel to adult children who were sexually/physically abused by their parents. My parents are both dead, so it will never be an issue for me, I also live in Minnesota so again not an issue. But, I would be very angry if I had to pay their medical bills. I would be very angry for my siblings as well because of the irony of my parents not always seeking medical attention for us when we need it.

[wickerwoman]

29. +1. These kinds of laws are atrocious.

People choose to have kids. It's fair to ask them to pay to support them. People don't choose to have parents and they certainly don't choose the parents they have.

[Marr]

13. How can this be legal?

It's insane.

[JCMach1]

14. what a crock... this is seriously flawed...

Would you have to pay the bills of your sperm donor then? What if you are adopted?

[dana_b]

16. lovely....

so young adults can be in debt up to their eyeballs with student loans now and then they may have to have their parents/grandparents' debts thrust on them too?? So I guess we need to all check on our parents' Medicare plans, health coverage and insurance to ensure our OWN futures!

[JDPriestly]

20. If conservatives have their way.

And on top of it, they want working people to pay for their military adventures.

It's ridiculous.

Remember, today's seniors paid the Social Security and Medicare costs for their parents. So it is not unreasonable for us to expect our children to pay ours. It's a generational obligation. But it should not be done by individual young people for their own parents. It should be done by all working and earning people for all seniors.

Are we a society?

Or are we just a mumbo-jumbo bunch of selfish individuals?

It's not a choice between Socialism or Capitalism. It's a choice about being socially cohesive or socially divided. Republicans and conservatives want to divide our country and our society. We Democrats and liberals (most of us anyway) want to have a society in which we have dignity not only as individuals but as a group.

This is the most important issue that young people face today.

And, frankly, the student loan issue is the same kind of thing. It used to be that states supported their colleges and universities through tax revenue. Now the tax revenue doesn't seem to be enough to do that, so kids have to borrow so much money. It's ridiculous. Let's go back to funding education and services for seniors from tax money. The lucky rich can afford education and retirement. All of us should be able to afford both. At today's wages, that is impossible.

[dana_b]

21. "It's a choice about being socially cohesive or socially divided."

That's exactly what it is. The conservatives would love to see SS and Medicare done away with (and I completely agree that we should pay for our grand/parents here) and everybody left to their own devices. Would that be a true "society" then?

I wish California would go back to funding education for its young people. When I told my daughter about that her head nearly exploded.

[snooper2]

41. So who are all these conservatives in California who voted for this filial law?

[JDPriestly]

50. Idiots who lived here before my time.

[Hatchling]

54. "today's seniors paid the Social Security and Medicare costs for their parents."

Not only thata but Boomers paid ahead for themselves as well, so as to not burden their children overly much.

The truth is, far from being greedy and robbing the next generation of workers, Boomers, for the first time in the history of the Social Security system, actually paid in advance into the Trust Fund in anticipation of the bigger drain on funds that would come when they all began to retire, at which point there’d be fewer younger workers paying into the system. Back in 1983, recognizing that the unprecedented wave of people born in the post World War II era would lead to a wave of retirees, Congress and the White House, under President Ronald Reagan, on the recommendation of a bi-partisan commission appointed by Reagan and headed by Alan Greenspan, later head of the Federal Reserve Bank, raised the FICA tax from 9.9% to 10.8%, and ultimately to 12.4%, paid half by employees and half by employers. This increase in funding built up a huge $2.4-trillion Trust Fund balance--one that was designed to be run down once the wave of Boomers began to retire (a point alarmist critics always fail to mention)...

http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/930

2) The Greenspan Commission recommended a major payroll tax hike to generate Social Security surpluses for the next 30 years, in order to build up a large reserve in the trust fund that could be drawn down during the years after Social Security began running deficits.

3) The 1983 Social Security amendments enacted hefty increases in the payroll tax in order to generate large future surpluses.

4) As soon as the first surpluses began to role in, in 1985, the money was put into the general revenue fund and spent on other government programs. None of the surplus was saved or invested in anything. The surplus Social Security revenue, that was paid by working Americans, was used to replace the lost revenue from Reagan’s big income tax cuts that went primarily to the

http://ampedstatus.org/how-your-social-security-money-was-stolen-where-did-the-2-5-trillion-surplus-go/

[JDPriestly]

55. Thanks. We've been had.

[Mariana]

28. Good luck checking on their plans

if they don't feel it's any of your business. You may be required to pay their bills after they're dead, but you have no right to know what their arrangements are while they're alive.

[dana_b]

44. yeah - that's helpful, right?

The whole thing is such b.s. and I can't see how it can't/won't be challenged (especially if it becomes a regular thing). Just because two people share some genes shouldn't mean that they are bound by the other's choices/life events.

[NYC Liberal]

17. I'd say these laws are bills of attainder, which are unconstitutional.

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

Bills of attainder are punishments handed out by the legislature without a judicial trial.

[JDPriestly]

18. I have been warning younger people on DU about this for a long time.

Without Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare for the very elderly, you young people could end up paying for your parents' nursing home care. Of course, you would have the alternative of living with your parents and supporting them in your home.

And just how would you take care of a parent with Alzheimers?

Don't fall for the Republican, Pete Peterson argument that we can't afford Social Security and Medicare.

Yes, it would be tough on the rich to raise their taxes, but the alternative to doing that is imposing costs that seniors expected to be paid through those taxes on adult children.

And, as we have seen over the past 30 years, the lower the taxes on the rich, the more they outsource and export jobs, the lower the wages they are willing to pay, the fewer jobs there are.

The Republicans are profoundly anti-social. They care neither about seniors nor about children, nor about young adults, nor about the middle-aged. They only care about themselves. And even when it comes to themselves, they do not have the understanding of what it is to be human to know what is really good for themselves.

Save Social Security. Save Medicare.

And I do not trust Obama on this, not a bit. He appointed Geithner as his Secretary of Treasury, which means he put Geithner in charge of the Social Security Trust Fund. And Geithner was appointed to the Fed by a committee headed by Pete Peterson the arch-enemy of Social Security.

[oldhippie]

37. In the interest of accuracy .....

Neither the Social Security Trust Fund nor the Social Security Administration fall under the Treasury Department.

In 1953, the Federal Security Agency was abolished and the SSA was placed under the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. HEW became the Department of Health and Human Services in 1980. In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed into law 42 U.S.C. § 901 returning the SSA to the status of an independent agency in the executive branch of government.

Wiki - SSA

[Amster Dan]

19. The Hunger Games

That was my first thought.

[Suji to Seoul]

22. Confucian philosophy in american laws? when did this shit happen?

[Petrushka]

23. How would that work if your mother & father divorced after willingly giving you to the State and

the State turned you over to foster parents (along with your two brothers and four sisters), your father died (in jail) and, meanwhile, your mother went on to have one more daughter (fathered by a live-in friend with benefits) and, then, yet another daughter (by a second husband)?

Which, if any, of those children would/could be held responsible for the mother's bills (both husbands being deceased)? Note: The seven children raised in foster care were born in West Virginia; the other two, in Ohio.

[sarcasmo]

62. You can't work. I have been taking care of the wife for four years, and that is a full time job.

[BlueIris]

26. That is fucked up.

As someone living with the agony of nonfunctional parents and no other family to take care of them, I find this law abhorrent. And apparently it exists in more than one state?!

[Shankapotomus]

30. And what if your parents abused you

Or worse, were like the parents from Every Body Loves Raymond?

What then?

[peacebird]

31. Thirty states have this law? Was it one of ALECs "gifts"? Had YOU heard of it before?

We had not.
Makes me wonder why not? What do you all think? How long have these laws been on the books? And can people sue over the constitutionality?

[Larry Ogg]

32. Holding an innocent person responsible for the debt of relatives...

is an evil that is primitive, and barbaric.

I know the US is pretty screwed up, but I still thought that, once upon a time, this kind of thing was against the law big time.

It seems more and more, that there is no limit when it comes to making a profit off the suffering of others.

So maybe this will be the precedent for the future, and the morality of the day will dictate, that I will be held responsible for the debt of a brother or long lost cousin that I never knew existed.

And what if I'm related to a low life petty criminal that's been dead for a hundred years, could I someday be held responsible for crimes I didn't commit?

I guess I shouldn't be shocked, after all, I live in a country where politicians stand around with their heads up their ass well the ruling class loots the national treasure.

And as if that wasn't enough, they help the looters bury the working classes so called government of the people in a mountain of debt that is owed to the looters.

And as if it's the moral thing to do, generations of debt slaves who have yet to be born, will be forced by politicians who have yet to be born, to make payments to the heirs of looters who have yet to be born.

If fucked up is good, this country is without a doubt, on track to becoming the envy of the world!

[SammyWinstonJack]

51. As a matter of fact, I have heard Obama say that we are indeed, the envy of the world.

Depends on which part of the world he is speaking of, I guess.

[Larry Ogg]

61. When he says, "We are the envy of the world!" he might have a mouse in his pocket…

But then, he is most likely referring to the 1% to which he is apart of.

And as a bonus, hoards of Right Wing Authoritarian DINOs will never suspect that such arrogance is possible, and the cruelty of denial means that they will therefore interpret such BS as him praising their superior greatness.

If it were a magic trick, you might call it “The talking out of both sides of your head affect”.

[Javaman]

33. Couple that with student loan debts and the current generation

is completely fucked. Then this also that climate change thing.

I'm glad I'm middle age, I'll be dead before the absolute worst hits. My the universe have mercy.

[Odin2005]

34. WTF? Why haven't I heard about this before?

[uponit7771]

35. Don't the parents have to transfer their assets to their kids BEFORE this happens?

[IphengeniaBlumgarten]

42. Yes, I think that was the motivation for such laws --

It was a popular strategy for parents with assets -- but not enough assets to purchase long term care insurance -- to transfer assets to their children, either by gift, or favorable sale, prior to needing nursing home care or expensive medical treatment. Then they did not have to "spend down" their assets before becoming eligible for Medicaid.

About 20 or 30 years ago, maybe more, this practice was widespread enough to inspire these laws so that assets that had been hidden in this way could be clawed back to help pay the medical and other care that these parents had received.

It may be that the laws intended to correct this problem have gone too far. But let's not blame ALEC for their existence.

In Louisiana (my state), I notice that there has to be some hearing before the children are held responsible for any debts. Presumably this would be an opportunity to examine whether assets had been transferred or not.

Perhaps a lawyer could weigh in on this?

[xchrom]

36. Debt - the magical ever re-newing Gold Mine. Nt

[avaistheone1]

40. Well said.

Sad, but true.

[TheMastersNemesis]

43. The GOP Congress Has Passed Laws Against Transfer Of Assets

During the Bush administration the GOP Congress has passed laws changing the "look back provisions" on Medicare covering long term care. It is essentially illegal for a lawyer to transfer funds to avoid the cost long term care bills. A lawyer can go to jail or be disbarred for arranging such a transfer. Plus the look back rules have changed to make it almost impossible to transfer assets. The 36 month "look back rules" have been changed. Before if assets were transferred and it was more than 36 months before a parent went into long term care, then the assets could not be assessed. The GOP passed rules that somehow changed that "look back period". I am not sure what the new rule is but transfer of assets is almost impossible now.

The GOP model means that the children can forget about inheritance if a parent goes into long term care. The only thing they might inherit under the GOP plan is the bill from the nursing home. All one can hope for is a quick death of an ill parent. Other than that Euthanasia will be sought of as an option over long term care.

The GOP are nothing but a bunch of greedy thieving bastards.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

45. These laws are widespread, but most lawyers won't touch them

Most of these laws are archaeic and the limits so low they aren't worth litigating.

[Democrats_win]

46. The "sins" of the father visited upon the sons & daughters?

The Confucian idea of filial piety is certainly a decent philosophy but in our constitutional democracy, it seems wrong to enforce it by law.

It's one thing to rightly go after the parent's assets to pay for their care. However going after the kids assets isn't right. Will the government next enforce all of the parent's debts through the children? Although in Dickens' novels, the minor children may have stayed with the father in debtors prison, they weren't held responsible for the debt. They could come and go (see Little Dorrit).

[hunter]

48. We could make it a crime to be old and require nursing home care.

That way we could simply drop our parents off at any police station when they became too much of a burden.

"By Mom!"

[FarCenter]

49. A new form of Safe Haven Law?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_haven_laws

[Habibi]

63. Actually, I wish I'd had that option for my MIL.

[Liberal_in_LA]

52. CA just got rid of that practice

[Zalatix]

57. What do you mean 'got rid of'?

You mean they abolished the WHOLE filial responsibility law?

Where did you find this out at?

[Liberal_in_LA]

64. see attached.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-child-welfare-debts-20120512,0,5753455.story

[Zalatix]

65. Well I'll be darned. You just put a smile on a person's face tonight.

It's hard to believe good things can happen nowadays but here's one example of such. Many thanks!

[sarcasmo]

59. Bankruptcy for MR Pittas, what a messed up society we live in.

[Alexander]

60. And yet, Ken Lay's family is untouchable after he stole millions at Enron.

We have one set of rules for the rich, and another set for everybody else.