Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Oregon’s statute is a single, bare sentence declaring that children must maintain poor parents, with no enforcement mechanism, no procedure, no penalty and no defenses written into it anywhere in the surrounding chapter.
What Oregon actually sets out
| What the statute sets out | What it says |
|---|---|
| Or. Rev. Stat. Sec. 109.010 | “Parents are bound to maintain their children who are poor and unable to work to maintain themselves; and children are bound to maintain their parents in like circumstances.” |
| No enforcement mechanism anywhere in the chapter | Chapter 109’s neighboring sections, Sec. 109.012 and Sec. 109.015, govern minor-child support and public-assistance child support, not elder support; no procedure, penalty, or civil action for a violation of Sec. 109.010 itself was found anywhere in the chapter. |
| No stated indigency threshold | Poor and unable to work to maintain themselves is the entire trigger; the statute does not define either phrase further. |
| No cap, no defenses, no time limit | Nothing in the statute’s text addresses a dollar cap, a defense such as prior abandonment, or a filing deadline. |
| Case law | No case confirming this statute has ever been used against an adult child for a parent’s nursing-home debt was found. |
How it works in practice
- This is a declaration of duty, not an operative cause of action in the way Pennsylvania’s or California’s statutes are; nothing in Chapter 109 tells a reader who could sue, in what court, or for how much.
- Because no enforcement mechanism is written into the statute or its neighboring sections, it is reasonable to treat this law as effectively untested rather than assume it operates the way a fully built-out statute like Pennsylvania’s does.
- The reciprocal framing, parents for children, children for parents, mirrors the oldest, shortest style of filial statute still on the books in several states.
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 Oregon.
What this page does not settle
- This page did not exhaustively search Oregon case law databases for every possible citation to Sec. 109.010; the absence of any enforcement history found here reflects a genuine search, not a certainty that none exists anywhere in Oregon’s reported decisions.
- 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.