FILIAL RESPONSIBILITY LAWS
Portia B. Scott, J.D., L.L.M. • September 6, 2021

A Reversal of Roles?

We all know that a parent has a financial obligation to support his or her minor child: child support. But, did you know that many states in the US can also impose on an adult child a responsiblibilty to support his or her parent? These are called “Filial Responsibility laws” and, before moving to such a state, it is good to understand how these laws work.


The logic of these law goes something like this: before all of the taxpayers should have the burden of providiing for impoverished adults, the law should look first to the children of the person seeking help from the state.


Typically, filial responsiblity laws are enforceable, though little attention is given to them. And then, in 2012, an impoverished woman who had been in full skilled nursing care in Pennsylvania was removed to Greece (the nation of her birth) which had soclialized medicine. The faciity was left with a huge, unpaid bill. The facility sued the adult son and got a judgment against him.


Many states have such laws on their books, though with a wide variety of who may institute the suit. For instance, our neighbor to the north, Georgia, apparently only authorizes counties providing support to the indigent to initiate suit. Delaware, Massachuttes, North Dakota, New Jersey, even Alaska have some form of duty imposed on the adult children of indigent parents. Some states, such as North Carolina, even criminalize failure to support one’s indigent parent if able.


Jurisdiction over the child does become an issue if the child does not reside in the same state as the indigent parent. But what about residents of North Carolina who only maintain a temporary presence in Florida? 


Florida, of course, has no such laws. We utilize Medicaid to help the elderly poor in need of medical assistance. Still, it is useful, before moving to another state, to take its filial responsibility laws into consideration.


Share this article

MY MOTHER, THE GRAMMAR TEACHER, WOULD BE SO PROUD: We Have Our Own "Comma" Case

By Portia B. Scott, J.D., L.L.M. • July 22, 2026
One of the most absurd things for law students to grasp in that all-important first year, is the idea of what can be considered "ambiguous." (Ambiguity is "an uncertainty of meaning or intention, as in a contractual term or statutory provision.") If language is deemed "ambiguous," what happens next depends on where this ambiguity is found. The ambiguity can be subject to interpretation of a Court - if it is in a statute. If the Court has to use interpretation, there are several tools they can use to derive meaning and intent from the writers of the statute. This search for "Legislative intent" is sometimes easy if there is a part of the statute stating specifically what the Legislature was trying to do. Without that, however, judges will look at what the plain and simple language would mean. If that does not help, then they can look at the surrounding language, the other terms, what might be excluded, what would make the language harmonious with the other laws on the topic... All kinds of factors are examined to determine what the law is trying to say. However, if the ambiguity is found in a contract, the options are different and depend on whether the ambiguity is an obvious mistake ("Art is the Buyer" and then, later "The Buyer, Bert" is written in the same contract) or whether it is a more sneaky ambiguity. Here is where the comma comes into play. The Tariff of 1872 misplaced a comma, resulting in fruits not being subject to the tax. The tariff was trying to say that fruits and fruit plants would be subject to the tariff, but, by placing a comma where it did not belong, fruits become tax free and only fruit-bearing plants were subject to the Tariff. Another is a case where there would be no overtime payments for work done for "...drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution" of foods. Because there was no comma between "shipment" and "distribution," the Court found it questionable if "shipment and distribution" were one joint act or two separate ones. The result? Workers got their overtime payments. Now, we have a case, decided July 22, 2026 by our appellate court, that a comma found between "construed according to the laws of the State of Florida" and "with venue in Collier County," created an ambiguity allowing venue to be set in another County (Martin). The comma controlled and there is an ambiguity, allowing the action to be filed in Martin County, rather than Collier. The benefits of filing in one county verses another, well, that would be an entirely different article.  Just remember: Watch those punctuation marks folks! Ambiguities may be found everywhere!

Gloves are Off!

By Portial B. Scott, J.D.,L.L.M. • May 31, 2026
Appellate Gloves Are Off: Warnings Appear to Be Over with Our Courts Over Unverified Artificial Intelligence Arguments and Filings This is the third straight article I have written on this topic - but things keep moving and changing. In my first two articles on this topic (the use of Al in Court filings), I explained that our appellate Court (the "4th") has been issuing warnings about the use of Artificial Intelligence in drafting and filing papers with the Court if the Al is not double-checked against reality. In those articles, I explained that the 4th was giving warning after warning against filing unauthenticated Al-generated motions, petitions, appeals, complaints, briefs, memoranda of law. Now, in three separate rulings on May 27, 2026, the 4th has stopped issuing warnings and has started imposing sanctions and, for attorneys, referrals to the Florida Bar for disciplinary action. In the first case,a self-represented litigant was found to have abused the courts. by filing some 90 Al-generated motions against his former wife. The 4th observed that the arguments made in his appeal to the 4th were not based on actual cases, rules of procedure or, if they were actual cases, such arguments were not found in those cases. As a self-represented litigant, the 4th cannot refer him to the bar for discipline. So, what can the 4th do? They can prohibit him from being able to file any more papers in our courts without having a Florida Bar -licensed attorney sign off on the papers. This is a drastic sanction since access to the Courts is of such high value in America. We want people to have access to the Courts - so they don't settle their disputes at high noon in the middle of the street with firearms or have it out with brawls. The idea behind requiring such sanctions is that an attorney will think twice before endangering their right to practice law. The attorney requirement is expensive, too. Still, when a litigant abuses the courts system, there must be some way to safeguard the integrity of the Court. The idea of an attorney cherishing their rights to practice, however, may not always be 100% accurate. (See below) The second case involved an attorney who filed an "emergency" motion, citing cases which do not stand for the concept of what the attorney claimed. By way of example of what I mean, if the attorney claimed that Roe v. Wade stands for the proposition that income tax is unconstitutional, that would be claiming something that just is not so. Importantly, it is verifiably not so. One need only look at the Roe v. Wade decision to see it is not correct. The 4th said that, whether the case is misrepresented as meaning something it does not or even does not exist at all, it does not matter. Both are equally wrong. The attorney was reported to the Florida Bar for disciplinary inquest. in the third case, an attorney filed a brief which included references to what has happened at trial and quoted from the transcript of the trial. However, since appeals ususally have to have a copy of the transcript included when the appeal is filed (so the 4th can read what actually happened and not just take the filer's word for it), it soon became obvious that what the attorney said had been said in Court was not true. This might have been a result of poor prompting by the attorney to the Al or intentionally misdirecting the Al. It also could be that the transcript of the trial was fed to Al and Al misunderstood what had happened - due to not understanding fully the meaning of certain legal terms. On top of that, Al also "hallucinated" legal authority and the attorney filed it with the 4th, even apparently invoking some of it in oral argument before the 4th, doubling his sins. In the end, how it happened did not matter. The 4th found that the lawyer cited imaginary legal authorities as if they were law and the 4th reported him to the Florida Bar for discipline action, putting his law license in jeopardy.  I want to make it clear: the 4th does not prohibit the use of Al in filings, but everyone must ensure that the citations to legal authority, the statement of the facts and all manner of statements are accurate, real and not the figments of Al's desire to provide a winning argument at the cost of truth.