Filial Responsibility and Long Term Care

A Pennsylvania state appeals court has ruled that the adult son of a nursing home resident is responsible for her unpaid $93,000 bill. And the decision has some elder care lawyers wondering if this is just the beginning of a trend.

Pennsylvania is one of 30 states that have filial responsibility statutes—laws that impose a duty on adult children to care for their indigent parents. About two-thirds of those states, including Pennsylvania, allow long-term care providers to sue family members to recover unpaid costs.

These filial responsibility laws are not new. In fact, they can be traced back 400 years to Poor Relief laws in England. In the U.S. many states have had them on the books for decades, but they have been rarely enforced.

That may be changing. With the costs of long-term care rising (an average nursing home stay now exceeds $200/day), and with increasingly strict Medicaid rules making it tougher for people to receive government assistance, senior services providers may find themselves with more unpaid bills. These suits may generate bad publicity but may also be a facility’s only recourse.

While these laws don’t directly apply to Medicaid recipients, they may force children to pick up their parents’ long-term care costs long before mom is ever eligible for Medicaid. Such a step could still shift significant costs from states to families. This is another reason advisors need to include long-term care in their assessments they do with their senior clients and offer solutions that not only protect their senior clients but ensure their legacy is not one of burden for their family. For more information check out Elder Law Answers web site.