Article 3.205 of the currently valid Civil Code stipulates that adult children are obliged to support their disabled and dependent parents and take care of them. Maintenance is paid by mutual agreement between children and parents or by a court decision awarding maintenance from the children based on the parents’ claim.
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The court may relieve adult children from the obligation to support their disabled parents if it finds that the parents avoided fulfilling their duties to minor children. The Civil Code also specifies a circumstance when parents do not have the right to maintenance – if the children were permanently separated from their parents due to the parents’ own fault.
“While examining the issue of persons maliciously not paying alimony, I noticed a provision in the Civil Code that a person may neglect children, not pay maintenance, and do other bad things, but theoretically he has the possibility to claim maintenance from such children in old age. I think this is completely unfair, and I believe we would at least partially restore justice by establishing that persons who did not take care of their children should, unfortunately, not have the opportunity to demand from them in old age what they themselves did not do throughout their lives,” said the project initiator, Member of Parliament Darius Razmislevičius, presenting the amendments.
In order to strengthen the principle of justice and protect adult children from the obligation to support their disabled and dependent parents who themselves grossly violated their duties to support their children until adulthood, it is proposed to clearly specify in the Civil Code when parents should not have the right to maintenance.
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Parents would lose the right to receive maintenance from their children upon reaching old age if they: avoided fulfilling their duties to minor children and systematically failed to fulfill the obligation to materially support their minor children; used violence against a child or another family member directly related to the child’s welfare, including physical, psychological, or sexual violence; violated the child’s interests, resulting in the issuance of a protection order against domestic violence or another official protective measure decision; neglected the child and/or did not care for them due to their own fault, including abuse of alcohol, narcotics, or other factors preventing the fulfillment of duties; had parental authority temporarily or indefinitely restricted, except in cases where, upon establishing the child’s temporary guardianship, the parents (father or mother) made efforts to change their behavior and the children were returned to the family.
The draft amendments to the Civil Code were approved by 61 members of the Seimas after submission, one voted against, and 27 abstained. The Legal Affairs Committee was appointed as the main committee to consider this issue.
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The project is scheduled to be considered at the Seimas session on December 15.
