The terms “spousal support” and “child support” are well known; “parental support?”… not so much. But it is provided for by Ontario statute and can be advanced by a parent in need against an adult child, both before and after death.

Section 32 of the Family Law Act provides for parents to claim support from their adult children. In addition to the requirement that the parent be in need, the parent must show that he or she cared for and supported the adult child when he or she was a minor and that the adult child is capable of support.

Part V of the Succession Law Reform Act similarly allows parents in need to claim support from the estates of their adult children. However these constitute the vast minority of support claims. It may be, however, that with an aging population, we will see more of these kind of claims.

While a support claim may be triggered by the death of an adult child, if there are multiple children, it can be seen how the respondent estate trustee will seek to share any obligation to support with the surviving siblings.

There are few reported cases. In Berendt v Berendt, the applicant was a woman who was predeceased by her husband. Her entitlement in the estate was not sufficient and she advanced a claim under Part V of the SLRA. Support was sought alternatively against the respondent stepsons personally under s. 32 of the FLA (the Applicant’s primary claim under Part V of the SLRA was restricted by the existence of a competing entitlement of an adult child under disability).

The court did not accept that there was any obligation on the part of the sons of the deceased’s husband to support the Applicant. In this case, the sons were 34 and 28 when the Applicant married their father and she did not adopt them. As the court said, there was “no interdependency.”

The bottom line is that the obligation of an adult child to provide support to a parent is a legal obligation. As such, it would appear that a parent who meets the requirements of s. 32 of the FLA would not have to show that he or she was receiving support immediately before death in order to advance a dependant’s relief claim against the estate of their adult deceased child.

Thanks for reading,

David Morgan Smith (with thanks to John Mikhail)