18/02/2014
Roberto Inclán is a Germanist
Not having had contact with your son for forty years or having disinherited him cannot be considered as misconduct. This is what a recent judgement delivered by the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH in German) on February 12 stated, forcing a child to pay EUR 9,022.75 as part of the expenses incurred by the City of Bremen on his father’s health care.
Even though the father had broken contact with his son in 1972, when he was just 18, and had subsequently rejected any attempt to resume their relationship, the Court has considered that the father had completed the “particularly intensive period of parental care” which childhood and adolescence represent, and that the intergenerational direct ties between a father and his son are therefore maintained.
While said judgement does not justify a particularly serious misconduct, it does represent another turn of the screw on the economic exigency imposed by the State on a social group which is beginning to be known as the “sandwich generation”, because they have to face increasing family responsibilities, both from below—children—and from above—parents—. To further compound the situation, the number of years they remain dependant has increased for both cases: for children due to their increasingly late and uncertain entry into employment, and for the elderly due to the significant increase in life expectancy, which, in many cases, creates the need of special care, incurred by citizens and the State.
It remains to be seen how this situation will affect the German municipalities’ budget for health care expenses, which amount to EUR 3,700 million. In the future, the German Bundestrat (Senate) will have to comment on a controversy on which the two parties of the great coalition have opposing opinions. While the CDU party agrees with and welcomes said judgement, the SPD party has already publicly criticized it. According to what SPD party health expert Karl Lauterbach said to the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung German daily,the ruling of the Supreme Court is “incomprehensible from a human point of view”.