Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Arkansas has a filial-liability statute, but it is narrower than the popular lists suggest: it reaches only the cost of state mental-health treatment, not a parent’s general living or nursing-home expenses, and it applies to whoever is already legally responsible for the patient under some other Arkansas law.
What Arkansas actually sets out
| What the statute sets out | What it says |
|---|---|
| Ark. Code Ann. Sec. 20-47-106 | “A person legally liable for the support, care, or maintenance of an individual in need of state mental health services under this chapter is liable for the costs of such mental health services to the extent that: the individual in need of services lacks the ability to pay; the mental health services are not covered by a policy of insurance or other source of payment; and the legally liable person is able to pay.” |
| Scope: mental-health treatment costs, not general elder support | The section sits in Title 20’s mental-health chapter, not a poor-relief or elder-support chapter, and does not itself name adult child or parent as the liable relative. It applies only to a person who is already legally liable for the patient’s support under some other Arkansas provision. |
| The companion county-recovery section it replaced | The same 2017 act that produced the current text (Act 423 of 2017, Sec. 33) also repealed the older county-recovery mechanism, former Sec. 20-47-107, which had let a county recover mental-health-maintenance costs from any parent, guardian, or custodian. |
| Cap or time limit | No dollar cap or filing deadline is stated in the current section’s text. |
| Case law | No reported enforcement case was located for this session. |
How it works in practice
- This statute does not, on its own text, establish that an adult child is automatically the legally liable person for a parent; it presupposes that status exists under other Arkansas law and then sets the ability-to-pay conditions for cost recovery.
- All three conditions, the patient’s own inability to pay, no insurance or other payer, and the liable person’s actual ability to pay, must be met before a dollar is owed.
- This is a mental-health-services statute specifically. It is not the right citation for an ordinary nursing-home or assisted-living bill unrelated to mental health treatment.
What a filial responsibility statute is, why most of them sit unused, and which state is the one with documented recent enforcement is explained on the filial responsibility laws by state page. How this fits alongside the other two mechanisms that can turn a parent’s medical debt into a living person’s debt is explained on who actually owes medical bills after a death, and what a nursing home may and may not ask a family member to sign at admission is on the admission agreement traps page. This page is the record for Arkansas.
What this page does not settle
- Whether an adult child counts as legally liable for a parent under any other current Arkansas statute, which is the unstated premise this section depends on, was not independently confirmed this session; Arkansas Code Sec. 20-47-106 was read directly from the state’s own enrolled 2017 act, but the broader poor-relief framework it cross-references was not.
- This page reads the state’s own current code. A state can amend or repeal this section without the page around it changing, and a detail specific to your situation, such as a pending Medicaid application or a prior period of estrangement, can change which part of the statute applies.
- A statute existing is not the same question as whether it has ever been used. Enforcement history, where it exists at all, is noted on this page; where none was found, that is stated plainly rather than left blank.
- Every quotation here was read against the source on September 4, 2026. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and the statute’s own defenses and procedural requirements matter as much as its liability language.
Whether this statute actually reaches a given family’s situation is decided by a court on the specific facts, not by this page. Nothing here is legal advice, and no one should sign anything or send money on the strength of a web page.
Sources
The sources above were retrieved and read against the state text on September 4, 2026. Every quotation on this page was checked against those bytes.