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Comment by lm28469 | Hacker News Reader

Depending on the country you might actually be legally obligated to take care of them unless you can prove serious crimes like physical/sexual abuse

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I'm aware of some places where you might be financially obligated to support parents (Pennsylvania, for example has a filial support law). Is there any place where you literally have to care for them?

The majority of states in the us have those laws and with increasing burden on the government due to greying of the population the courts are likely to shift towards more rigorous enforcement.

Yeah, but they're about financial support, from what I see. Which can already be a big thing, but I doubt there are laws that turn into you a literal nurse for them.

Have you looked at what skilled care costs? It's either be their nurse or be bankrupt.

My point was: do these laws mandate that you have to take care of them? Or is just pay a percentage of your income, like alimony?

In American law you usually can't get a court order requiring someone to do a job, you can usually only get a court order for restitution via financial payment if they failed to do a job they were supposed to do.

So my educated guess would be you never have to actually care for your parents, but I'd be curious if any other countries actually will order children to nurse their parents.

No free country.

HN has readers from all over the world, including Pennsylvania: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/what-do-you-mean-i-am-resp...

USA, Germany, Singapore are some of them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws

I get that “no free country” can have many meanings, but these laws certainly exist in countries people call free.

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