Love among family members cannot be legislated. It is something that a child or parent or sibling gives freely because he or she also receives it, ideally unconditionally.
However, making adult children visit elderly parents could be mandated by law. At that is just what the city of Shanghai did. Beginning May 1, 2016, adult children from the financial hub of China whose parents live in the same city would be required to visit their elderly parents regularly.
During the required visits, they are supposed to fulfill their obligation to provide financial and spiritual support to their fathers and mothers as often as they could. The order covers parents in family homes or nursing institutions, reported Global Times.
If they disobey, the adult children could face a lawsuit or have the credit score lowered, threatened Luo Peixin, deputy director of Shanghai’s legislative affairs office, according to Thepaper.cn. Shanghai is not the first local government in China to pass such a law. Jiangsu and Guangdong Provinces has similar legislation and also Beijing.
As part of the new law, Shanghai is beginning to develop legal networks which would assist elderly parents in filing lawsuits against their children who fail to visit and provide support regularly.
According to the New York Daily News, over the past 15 years, about 1,000 Chinese parents have sued their children for financial support. One such celebrated case is that of 94-year-old Zhang Zefang from Fusheng Village, east of Chongqing City. Probably because her own children are dead, she filed a lawsuit against her daughter-in-law Kuang Shiying.