Filial Friday: Elderly NJ Parents Held Not Liable to Pay Care for Disabled Adult Son in PA

In the latest chapter of an ongoing dispute between a specialized care facility, Melmark, Inc., and the older parents of a disabled adult son, Pennsylvania’s intermediate Superior Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of the parents.  

The July 19, 2017 appellate decision in Melmark v. Schutt is based on choice of law principles, analyzing whether New Jersey’s more limited filial support law or Pennsylvania’s broader filial law controlled.  If applied, New Jersey law “would shield the [parents] from financial responsibility for [their son’s] care because they are over age 55 and Alex is no longer a minor.” By contrast, “Pennsylvania’s filial support law…would provide no age-based exception to parental responsibility to pay for care rendered to an indigent adult child.”

The parents and the son were all, as stipulated to the court, residents of New Jersey.  New Jersey public funding paid from the son’s  specialized care needs at Melmark’s Pennsylvania facility for some 11 years.  However, when, as part of a “bring our children home” program, New Jersey cut the funding for cross-border placements, the parents, age 70 and 71 year old, opposed return of their 31-year old son, arguing lack of an appropriate placement.  Eventually Melmark returned their son to New Jersey against the parents’ wishes, with an outstanding bill for unpaid care totaling more than $205,000, incurred over his final 14 months at Melmark.

Both the Pennsylvania trial and appellate courts ruled against the facility, concluding that “the New Jersey statutory scheme reflects a legislative purpose to protect its elderly parents from financial liability associated with the provision of care for their public assistance-eligible indigent children under the present circumstances.”  The courts rejected application of Pennsylvania’s law as controlling.

This is a tough case, with hard-line positions on the law staked out by both sides.  One cannot expect facilities to provide quality care for free.  On the other side, one can empathize with families who face limited local care choices and huge costs.

Ultimately, I anticipate these kinds of cross-border “family care and cost” disputes becoming more common in the future for care-dependent family members, as the impact of federal funding cuts trickle down to states with uneven resources of their own.  Some of these problems won’t see the courtroom, as facilities will likely resist any out-of-state placement where payment is not guaranteed by family members, old or young.