Filial support obligations under Singapore, United States, and Chinese Law: a comparative study

• Author: Filial support obligations under Singapore, United States, and Chinese Law: a comparative study
• Pages: 164-192

FRONTIERS OF LAW IN CHINA

VOL. 14 JUNE 2019 NO. 2

DOI 10.3868/s050-008-019-0010-0

FOCUS

AGING POPULATIONS AND THE LAW: A COMPARATIVE APPROACH

FILIAL SUPPORT OBLIGATIONS UNDER SINGAPORE, UNITED STATES, AND

CHINESE LAW: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

YU Lüxue*

Abstract The increase in aging populations is one of the most important issues facing

the world today. This article considers how the legal systems in three jurisdictions —

China, Singapore, and the United States — with different legal, political, and ethical

regimes, impose and then enforce obligations on adult children to care for their parents.

For Singapore, this article considers the content and operation of the Maintenance of

Parents Act 1996 and the use of mediation and tribunals for the enforcement of its

provisions. For the United States, where more than half the states have some forms of

filial support legislation, this article mainly focuses on the experience in Pennsylvania

and North and South Dakota and considers cases interpreting the legislation from these

states; it also considers the interplay between the legislation and federal social security

and healthcare programs. For China, this article mainly considers the obligations

imposed by the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of the Rights

and Interests of the Elderly (amended in 2009, 2012, 2015 and 2018) with examples of

recent cases decided in 2017 and the encouragement given to children to support their

parents through two agreements (the Separation of Family Assets and the Family

Support Agreement) and increased inheritance rights under the Law of Succession 1985.

China is unusual in imposing a legal obligation on children to visit their elderly parents,

and the article considers recent cases on this. Through a comparative approach, this

article also assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches in each jurisdiction.

Keywords Maintenance of Parents Act (MPA), Tribunal for the Maintenance of Parents,

federal programs, nursing home fee recovery, Elderly Law, Separation of Family Assets

(SFA), Family Support Agreement (FSA), obligation to visit

INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 165

I. SINGAPORE.............................................................................................................. 167

A. Character of the MPA: Practical Concerns and the Tradition of Filial Piety...167

B. How the Elderly Seek Support from Their Children ..........................................170

* (余履雪) Ph.D. in Jurisprudence, School of Law, Peking University, Beijing, China; Associate Professor,

School of Law, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China. Contact: yuluxue@ruc.edu.cn

2019] FILIAL SUPPORT OBLIGATIONS UNDER SINGAPORE, UNITED STATES AND CHINESE LAW 165

C. Recent Statistics for Support Cases................................................................... 171

II. THE UNITED STATES............................................................................................... 173

A. An Overview of Filial Support Legislation........................................................ 174

B. Legislation in Pennsylvania, North Dakota, and South Dakota........................ 177

C. Enforcement in the Pennsylvania and North and South Dakota Courts ........... 178

III. THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA...................................................................... 181

A. The Moral Requirement of Filial Piety..............................................................181

B. Legislation and Agreements among Family Members ...................................... 183

C. Examples: Judicial Allocation of Support Burdens and the Obligation to

Vis it ................................................................................................................... 186

CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................ 189

INTRODUCTION

In the next 20 to 30 years, the majority of the world’s nations will face not only

rapidly aging populations but also significant increases in the costs of looking after the

elderly. The figures are extraordinarily large. According to the United Nations, in 2017

there were around 962 million people aged 60 or over in the world, comprising 13% of

the global population. With the number of over-60s increasing at a rate of around 3% per

year, by 2050 all regions of the world except Africa will have nearly a quarter or more of

their populations aged 60 or above.1 This is a particularly significant issue for the Asia

Pacific region as, according to research from the Asia Pacific Risk Center in 2016, it is

“the fastest aging region in the world. Between 2015 and 2030, the number of elderly

people (aged 65 years and above) who call the region home will increase by at least

200 million. This represents an increase of 71 percent in the number of elderly people,

compared to increases of 55 percent in North America and 31 percent in Europe over the

same period.”2

This will result in many countries facing an increasingly heavy fiscal and political

burden “in relation to public systems of health care, pensions and social protections for a

growing older population.”3 For example, the Asia Pacific Risk Center estimates that for

the 14 economies4 it assessed from 2015 to 2030, the annual elderly healthcare

expenditure will increase five times from the 2015 expenditure of 500 billion USD to 2.5

trillion USD by 2030. It also estimates that “the cumulative elderly healthcare

1 See World Population Prospects: Key Findings and Advanced Tables (2017 Revision), at 11, available at

https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2017_KeyFindings.pdf (last visited Jan. 18, 2019).

2 See Asia Pacific Risk Center, Advancing into the Golden Years: Cost of Healthcare for Asia Pacific’s

Elderly, at 13, available at http://www.mmc.com/content/dam/mmc-web/Files/APRC/APRC%20Ageing%

20report%20FULL.pdf (last visited Jan. 18, 2019).

3 See fn. 1.

4 These are China’s mainland, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan,

South Korea, Thailand, New Zealand, Australia, Chinese Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines.