Adult Children Sue French Parents for Support—and Win
A growing number of adult children suing their parents for support—and winning—has sparked a lobbying effort to revise the French law that holds parents responsible for supporting their children into their 20s and beyond.
French parents’ obligation to “nourish, maintain and raise” their children dates back to an 1804 Napoleonic law known as article 203. It was later revised to extend that obligation after—and sometimes, parents are finding, long after—a child reaches the age of 18, reports the London Times.
“The young people who exploit this law have generally had everything they needed during their childhood,” says Monique Tentorini, who founded the Association for Support and Information for Parents Confronted by Article 203. “Then, at some point, they have a disagreement with their parents, usually over a detail, and everything goes haywire.”
In her own case, a 21-year-old daughter announced plans to study in Canada for a year, and Tentorini asked her how she could afford to do so. Everything had been arranged, the daughter replied. Then her mother got the court summons.
Tentorini was ordered by a court to pay 137 euros per month out of her 1,219 euro salary as a social worker to help cover her daughter’s costs. “We had to tighten our belts and that meant depriving her two younger brothers,” the mother says. But even harder, she explains, is the psychological toll of being sued by a close relative. She and her daughter are no longer on speaking terms.
Such child-support suits have exploded over the past decade or so, rising from 30 annually in the early 1990s to 1,828 last year. Some children reportedly may have won support from their parents even though they are unwilling to work.
