Hi Marie we also live in jersey and having the same trouble in that my father has a care home to go to here in jersey and payment is covered by social.but he insist he goes into retirement home in France and expects us to pay.
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Steven
Presumably he fed, housed and educated (etc etc etc) you as a young person?
No he left over 45 years ago to live in France. When his partner died He was told to leave by her children and the house was sold. So he had nowhere to go. Now he wants to go back.
So he went to France, then came back to Jersey, and now wants to go back to France? Have I got that right? Or is he in France now?
Please read my first post.
Itās my opinion that children should have no moral obligation to their parents, nor should parents claim any entitlement on grounds of morality to support from their offspring.
I certainly donāt, and I can not imagine any situation in which I would change my mind.
Children have no choice in the matter of their birth IMO. If they feel an allegiance to their progenitors, it is wholly socially constructed and has no moral basis beyond social convention.
I felt abused by my mother and she contrived always to undermine her three sonsā relationships with their spouses, and with the grandchildren produced by those relationships.
Like many before me, I had to break my relationship with mother to save my marriage and our childrensā well-being. My own family only wish I had done so much earlier.
Our children (and my wife) have enough to cope with without having to concern themselves with me in any way, including the necessary disposal of my remains.
End of story.
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Everyone is of course perfectly entitled to their opinion.
But itās unfortunate if you then choose to live in a country where your opinion is directly opposed to the law of the land.
Under French law, direct line ascendants and descendants have legal responsibilities towards each other.
Whether you like it or not, thatās how it is.
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I am not going to contradict or challenge French law. I wonder if that law applies to a legitimate resident who is a British citizen and whose offspring are British citizens.
Are our children susceptible to the strictures of French law? Might they not be entitled to expect that any legal obligation on them to provide for me might be open to challenge in the UK courts?
And how might it be enforced?
Iām asking only in the spirit of enquiry, not for the sake of argument, Anna! 
One of our children is disabled, unemployable, and currently not in receipt of benefits (under appeal). We his family support him. He has no means at his disposal to support us. I imagine the French legal system has means at its disposal to take account of that, and similar contingencies. But I shall be happy to be better informed or advised.
Your first post is ambiguous!
So he is still in France, youāre on Jersey and want him to go to an old peopleās home there but he wants to stay in France, where he has lived for 45 years. Is THAT it?
If he hasnāt lived on Jersey for 45 years how does he get a free old peopleās home there?
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The relationship between parents and children is complex, and things do go wrong. However I do believe that a mark of an enlightened and humane society should be the presumption that parents and children do have a responsibility to each other. But there does need to be a way for children of toxic parents to seek emancipation and vice-versa.
If the parents had done the best they could for a child, financially and emotionally, then I do feel the child should proffer the same to the parent as he or she ages.
And in this particular case, if the father has lived in France for 45 years then has the family investigated what help would be available from French social security? As to drag an elderly (one presumes) person back to somewhere he hasnāt lived for many, many years to live in an anonymous care home does seem unfortunate. Perhaps Jersey is different, but totally local authority funded care can be pretty grim. If he were coming back to live with family maybe it would be more acceptable to him?
Hi Steven
Its really difficult when you want to help but the costs are so high. She moved to a really nice home, bathroom en suite, all meals provided, washing done etc, she could have looked after herself but took the easy option. I assumed initially that costs would
be met by Jersey pension but it wasnt enough, and they couldnt / wouldnt apply for assistance as children are expected to support parentās care under code civile. I was taken to french court for the costs but just didnt pay, eventually they brought it to jersey
court, and french social worker admitted there was no reciprocal agreement between jersey and france and they couldnt enforce the payments. The difficulty you might have is that they wont take him unless you agree to pay upfront whereas I wasnt involved in
her moving to the home until she was already there,
good luck
Gosh lucky isnāt it, eh, there being no reciprocal agreement, canāt imagine why it is so complicated, all this expecting people to take care of their parents, enough of this sentimental shilly-shallying, just dump them on the side of the road once their usefulness is over and they are too old to do anything about it.
Thereās (I think) an unwarranted assumption on your part in your responses to this issue, @vero, and that seems to be that parents expect, or want, or are willing to accept support from their offspring if and when they become incapable of caring, or ill-disposed to care, for themselves. Some may prefer the remedy sought by Titus Oates in the ill-fated expedition by Scott to the North pole.
I think thatās wrong (your outlook), and it surprises me that you seem unwilling to open to its possibility. But your are entitled to your red lines where itās a matter of personal ethics as applied to your own circumstances.
There seems to be an associated assumption that care by offspring is going to be feasible and meet minimum standards of adequacy. Some people have neither the technical or emotional competence to satisfy the needs of some older or disabled people, and with no supplementary interventions or resources being made available to them.
Cases of brutal abuse or gross neglect in such circumstances are not rare. Broad brush implications of dumping folk by the roadside to be rid of them is unjust and, I think, a narrow perspective on a complex issue.
I donāt have a problem with that, Peter - but it doesnāt seem, from what I have read, to be the case.
I suppose I find it shocking that people rejoice in being abroad and therefore not get-at-able for parental care when surely that care should be part of being a family. I quite see that all families donāt work this way, and that there is clearly a big difference between tge UK and France where family is concerned.
I am confronted, on a personal level, by the English half of my childrenās family who think that at 18 a child suddenly miraculously becomes 100% financially independent (and before that costs 25ā¬ a month to feed, house, clothe etc) needless to say I shall not be making the slightest effort to support my ex mother in law in her old age, even were she to ask, but had things been different, I would have.
So it is an English thing to which I am not culturally sensitive, I imagine. Apologies if I have hurt anyone by inferring they are heartless from what is normal English behaviour.
Itās not normal English behaviour to abandon your parents/offspring unless real problems.
My mother was a hugely independent type who didnāt want help, and didnāt believe she needed it even when she was found collapsed at a bus-stop by a neighbour. But as human beings (let alone as children) there was no way we could let her quietly moulder alone in her house. So we organised things and supported her to stay at her home, comfortable and cared for until she died many years later. She didnāt ask, we didnāt offer, it is just something you do.
Yes there are families who donāt, but to me that means there is something seriously wrong with that family or with some of the individuals within it.
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No it is not normal English behaviour at all. I didnāt have to support my parents financially as they had made provision for that themselves by being careful and saving all their lives but I did support them in many other ways in their old age, they moved closer to me for this reason as I had children at school and couldnāt travel to see them every day . My husband and his siblings did an amazing job for their parents which whilst not financially contributing directly as again they had provided for themselves it cost us thousands for the regular frequent trips back to enable my husband to do his share, it was a huge strain on the whole family. We know many, many English (I assume Vero only thinks itās an English problem) people whoās lives have been taken over by caring one way or another for aged parents and the toll it takes is devastating but they still do it regardless of the financial and emotional costs. I do however think itās unreasonable to expect a divorced or widowed son/daughter-in-law to be responsible for and ex parent-in-law.
I applaud your decisions in respect of your own kith and kin, Jane, and I am confident that for you it was the right course of action.
Your judgement of decisions taken by others whose values may differ from yours (and whose circumstances and cultures you can have not even the remotest knowledge of) jar.