The Succession Law Reform Act permits dependant support claims to be brought by a spouse, sibling, child and parent of a deceased. In order to qualify as a “dependant”, the person must be someone that the deceased (i) was providing support to immediately before death, or (ii) was under a legal obligation to support immediately before death.

Interestingly, the definition of “child” is not limited to minor children or financially dependant children. It is thus open to an independent adult child to whom no financial support was being paid immediately prior to death to apply for dependant support, premised on the argument that the deceased parent has a moral obligation to provide support. While we have seen the development and application of the moral obligation principle in Tataryn v. Tataryn Estate and Cummings v. Cummings, and although some decisions of the bench in British Columbia indicate that it is willing to apply the moral obligation principle in favour of independent adult children, in Ontario moral obligation appears to continue to be treated as but one factor to consider in the context of support claims. The fact remains that there is no legal obligation to provide support to an adult child.

A similar view may persist in the British court, which was recently reported to have disallowed an adult son’s plea for his wealthy parents to continue to financially support him, which litigation was brought after his parents significantly reduced their financial involvement. While in this instance the parents were alive and able to successfully respond to the court proceeding, had they died prior to or during the time when financial support was in the process of being reduced, would the adult son have had more success with such a claim? If his parents died subsequent to support being reduced or eliminated, would their estates still be vulnerable to a dependant support claim on moral grounds?

Although each case is fact-specific, I would not be surprised to see that in circumstances where there is a large estate and no other competing support claims, the court may work harder to striking a balance between fairness and testamentary intention, particularly where the parents are shown to have enabled a lifestyle and arguably created a dependency that they withdrew during adulthood.

Thanks for reading and have a great day,

Natalia Angelini