Many French people are unaware of it, but providing financial support to parents in need is a legal obligation under Article 205 of the Civil Code. With people living longer, more and more French people find themselves having to pay for their parents in their old age. Food, housing, medical expenses: the sums can be significant and exceptions are particularly rare.
Delphine has just been told that she will have to pay for her mother’s retirement home even though she broke off all contact with her over 15 years ago. The 35-year-old child care worker is up in arms: “I don’t want to sacrifice our dreams for someone who has never, ever been there for me”. She has decided to join a collective to try to change this law, which she finds unfair.
Pascale had not heard from her father until she was ordered to pay for his nursing home. “I’m being thrown back into the past,” she laments. “But I don’t need that today. I need to think about the future.” She will have to fight in court to escape this obligation.
Myriam, for her part, did not wait for the courts to ask her to take care of her mother in her old age. A natural gesture for her. But as the burden grows heavier, she will have to ask other members of her family to help. Quarrels, legal proceedings, these cases can last for years and sometimes send children who have become adults, like Colette, back to moments they would like to forget: “The last time I saw my mother I was 16 and I’m going to be 70. She had said goodbye to me as if she was going to come back in a month, but I never saw her again. For me, it’s abandonment.”
A story of family history, when the roles are reversed, and the children must, willingly or unwillingly, take financial responsibility for their parents.