Grown-Up Children Who Cling to their Parents' Purse Strings
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15 December, 2007 07:14
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Every year hundreds of French men and women take advantage of a 200 year old law to sue their parents for maintenance - and, constrained by the Civil Code of 1804, French judges order mamans and papas to pay as much as Euros1,500 a month to their adult offspring. The Code states that parents have "an obligation to nourish, maintain and raise their children", while a later amendment specifies that this parental obligation continues even after the children have come of age.
Most parents are more than willing to help their children financially - whether or not these have left the nest - if and when they can afford it. Indeed, in a family-conscious society like Gibraltar's its an approach that's taken for granted. But to go to litigation over it, sounds to Atlas like a recipe for breaking family bonds in the worst possiblr way. Certainly it's causing heartache and hardships in France.
Last year 1828 grown-up children - including several who refused to look for jobs or to leave the family home - brought successful "maintenance" suits against their parents. And by the end of this year more than 2000 will have gone down the same litigious route.
Now a group of parents have formed an association to fight for a change in the law and the amendment of Article 203, which they argue encourages abusive legal action by their offspring. The move is spearheaded by social worker Monique Tentorini, whose daughter took her to court to force monthly financial support for her studies in Canada. Tentorini, who argued that his daughter could obtain equal, if not better, tertiary education in France, was ordered to pay almost one-fifth of her monthly salary to the young woman...and to continue the payments for as long as her offspring demanded.
"The younger people who exploit this law have usually had everything they needed during their childhood," Tentorini says. "Then at some point they have a disagreement - usually over something trivial - and everything goes hay-wire."
A doctor in Normandy told his local newspaper that he supported his adult daughter to the tune of Euros1,200 a month for two years - and finally made her a one-off payment of Euros 20,000. He also made the mistake of telling his bank that he would cover her overdraft...which sometimes was as much as Euros 2,000 a month. "When I found out, I was horrified and told her to get by on her own," he explained.
She reacted by taking her parents to court...and they lost.
"At some time a child has to grow up, become and adult," says Tentoirini. "We want the obligation to nourish, raise and maintain children to be limited in time."
The boot was on the other foot last week in a Spanish court in Cantabria when a 71-year-old mother obtained an order that her abusive 36-year-old son Jose Luis Ortiz must move out of her home and find his own place to live. He admitted regularly insulting his mother Carmen, threatening to beat her and complaining that her cooking was dreadful - in fact that it "tasted like s***."
In his defence Ortiz argued that this comment was factual and an honest observation of his mother's "culinary ability", while the entire law suit was spurious and motivated by his mother's wish to see him move out. A recent study found that nearly 60 per cent of all Spaniards between the ages of 18 and 34 still live in their parental home, with more than a quarter still there after their 30th birthdays; nevertheless, Mrs Ortiz's desire to see the back of her son is understandable.
In fact, given his comments on her cooking, Jose Luis was lucky not to have a put of hot stiffado chucked over him. Though if it was as bad as he claimed, you'd have thought he would be glad to move out anyway...
A wake up call from the cops
When, after a night out on the slivovitz - or whatever it is they drink in Bulgaria - an Irish holidaymaker couldn't find his way back to a hotel he spotted a furniture salesroom, broke in, and tucked himself into one of the beds.
The 30-year-old was woken next morning by the police.
"He was furious when officers tried to get him out of bed," a police spokesman said. "We believe he had been drinking".
The Teddy Bears' Picnic moves to the Tate
What happened to Muhammed, the teddy bear at the centre of the row involving British teacher Gillian Gibbons, after she was deported from the Sudan last week? Did the mad mullahs chop off his head in some fundamentalist ritual in lieu of hers - a sort of Sudanese version of Obeah where pins are stuck in to effigies of someone you wish to harm? Or was he given the 40 lashes which the religious bigots of Khartoum wanted the teacher to receive? Or was he just dumped somewhere - suffering a less fortunate fate than his fictitious cousin, Paddington?
None of these, according to the English red-top tabloid best known for its topless Page 3 girls. The teddy has been locked away in a cupboard in the evidence store of the Khartoum's central police station - a sort of forgotten durance vile...
Paddington, the refugee bear from Peru, was far more fortunate when he was spotted perched among a pile of mail bags at the London station which gave him his name. He was adopted by the Brown family and developed a passion for marmalade sandwiches which he kept under his floppy-brimmed hat "for emergencies", (though as this column recorded recently Paddington has surrendered to commercial pressures and now shares Marmite sandwiches with seagulls).
Next June will see the 50th anniversary of the publication of "A Bear named Paddington", the first in a successful series of books that have sold more than 30 million copies world wide and have been translated into 30 languages. The last of these was published 29 years ago, though Paddington's 83-year-old creator - former BBC cameraman Michael Bond - still writes occasional stories about the Peruvian refugee, inspired by a teddy bear Bond bought in Selfridges one Christmas Eve as present for his wife.
And to mark next June's 50th anniversary a new full-length novel "Paddington Here and Now" is to be published. The plot is a secret almost as carefully guarded as have been those of the Harry Potter adventures. However it does have a political twist as police interrogate the stowaway about his status and his right to remain in Britain.
Nor do the bear sagas end there, for this year's winner of the £25,000 prestigious Turner prize announced last week is British artist Mark Wallinger whose main claim to artistic fame has been "wandering round art galleries dressed as a bear".
Wallinger, 48, was awarded the prize 12 years after he was nominated but lost to Damien Hirst. His film "Sleeper", which showed 154 minutes of him wandering around a deserted German gallery disguised as a bear, but recognisable by his very particular gait, has baffled and entranced visitors to the Turner prize exhibition by turns.
The prize was officially given not for "Sleeper", but for State Britain, his re-creation of Brian Haw's anti-war protest in Parliament Square. That was praised by the judges for its "immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance", combining "a bold political statement with art's ability to articulate fundamental human truths".
Which sounds like a lot of gobbledygook, doesn't it? But then the whole Tate award has become a farce...ever since Damien Hurst was awarded the prize for that half sheep in formaldehyde...
A green Chinese puzzle
Chinese doctors are baffled by a man whose sweat has turned green, according to agency reports. Chen Shunguo, a 52-year-old businessman from Wuhan, Central China, first noticed his apparently strange perspiration when his underclothes started to turn green. He was admitted to hospital for tests and - too the amazement of nursing staff and doctors, his sweat turned the bed sheets green."It is not apparent on his body but seems to affect cloth. Frankly, we are puzzled," a doctor said.Too many vegetarian spring rolls, or spinach chip-suey, Atlas suspects.
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