When a man and woman divorce while his children are still young, the court forces on the man obligatory support for the child called child support. That’s well known and easily understood in any culture. What I was shocked to find out on Thursday night from my friend Suffian is that here in this culture a man is equally legally responsible to support his parents.
Suffian and I are talking about him quiting his job so he can go full time into studying for ministry and also doing ministry. He’s extremely excited about it. For almost 2 years he has been serving the Lord with us and growing without accepting one cent for his work. He is already taking off three days every other week to go traveling on his follow up route. He is getting a lot of flack from his family. They are worried that by his neglect of work that he will not be able to support his mother. Now, she had nine kids. It turns out that he gives her more than any of the others and sometime it’s close to a quarter of his income. Upon further investigation this is what I found:
A parent has legal grounds to take their adult child before the court for not giving monthly support. The logic is that after the parent puts all kinds of money into the child and is due for that money to be returned when the child goes to work. Suffian has more than one friend that has a court order to pay their parents $120/month (about 1/2 minimum wage)! Now, Suffian said his mom would never do something like that.
So if your old and you’ve raised a few kids you might want to send this post to them …and maybe a letter from your lawyer too! (don’t get any ideas, dad!)