Filial Responsibility Laws by State (2026): Who Can Be Billed

Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: filial responsibility laws — which make an adult child liable for an indigent parent’s support — still exist in about twenty states. But one state has documented recent enforcement against an adult child: Pennsylvania. Nearly everywhere else the statutes sit unused, and several states that appear on widely circulated lists have repealed theirs.

What these laws actually say

The typical statute makes an adult child of sufficient ability liable to support a parent who is indigent and cannot support themselves. Some are civil and enforceable by a county or the state; a few are criminal — Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut each frame it as an offence. Most were written into poor-relief codes generations ago and were left in place when public assistance took over the function.

Pennsylvania is the real case, and it is worth understanding precisely

In Health Care and Retirement Corp. of America v. Pittas (2012 PA Super 96; 46 A.3d 719 (Pa. Super. 2012); allocatur denied, 63 A.3d 1248, 619 Pa. 706 (Pa. 2013)), the Superior Court of Pennsylvania upheld a judgment of roughly $92,943 against an adult son for his mother’s unpaid nursing-home costs under 23 Pa. C.S. § 4603. The court held the facility did not have to exhaust the mother’s own resources, pursue other liable relatives, or wait for a pending Medicaid application before proceeding against one child. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania declined to hear the appeal.

The limit that matters: the Superior Court is an intermediate appellate court. Pittas is binding in Pennsylvania and merely persuasive anywhere else. It is routinely cited as though it were a national rule. It is not.

Several states on the popular lists have repealed theirs

This is where circulated lists are most often out of date, and each of these was confirmed against the state’s own current code:

• Montana — repealed 2021 (Ch. 213, L. 2021). Still listed as a filial state by many secondary sources.
• Utah — repealed by H.B. 95 (2024), effective 1 May 2024.
• Maryland — repealed 2017. Current law runs only the other way: a parent’s duty to a destitute adult child.
• Maine — both former provisions marked repealed.
• Idaho — repealed around 2011.
• New York has a statute that is constantly miscited: Soc. Serv. Law § 101 reaches only a spouse or parent, and a parent only for a child under 21. It does not reach the adult-child-for-parent case at all.

Where a nursing home may raise it

The realistic scenario is not a state prosecution. It is a facility with an unpaid bill looking for someone to bill. That connects directly to the admission paperwork: federal law bars a facility from requiring a third-party guarantee of payment as a condition of admission, and a representative who signs to pay from the resident’s own funds does so without incurring personal financial liability. Signing the wrong line creates a contractual obligation that has nothing to do with filial law. What to read before you sign.

All 51 jurisdictions

Read from state primary sources on 3 August 2026. 26 of 51 rows were confirmed directly against the state’s own current code and are stated plainly. The remaining rows are marked not primary-verified — in almost every case because the state’s official code site is a JavaScript application, is Lexis-gated, returned 403, or had a broken certificate. Those rows are shown with their status rather than dropped or asserted.

Why the unverified rows skew toward “none found”: proving a statute exists takes one page. Proving one does not requires searching a whole code, which is exactly what a blocked site prevents. Treat “none found, not primary-verified” as an open question, not as a clean no.

This table is archived as a citable open dataset: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21781096 (CC BY 4.0). Every row carries its source URL, the date it was read, and its verification status — cite it rather than screenshotting the table.

What to do with this

The point is not to get out of supporting a parent — these statutes exist because families do have obligations, and most people want to help. The point is that a facility or an agency may assert a liability that your state’s law does not actually create, or may present routine paperwork as though it did. Knowing which of those you are looking at is what lets you respond to the real question, which is usually how the care gets paid for at all. What your state recovers after death and whether the house is at risk are usually the more consequential questions.

General information, not legal advice. State law and federal collection practice both change, and your own facts decide the outcome. Sources and read dates are given so you can check them yourself.