German Court Forces Man to Pay for Estranged Father's Senior Care

Whether the judge(s) cited an actual statute or simply legislated from the bench I don't know, but regardless of the reasons for this decision, we can say for certain that there is no Rule of Law in Germany.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/02/12/german-court-man-must-pay-care-costs-for-father-who-cut-off-contact-more-than/?intcmp=obnetwork

"A German federal court has ruled that a man must pay the cost of old-age care for his late father, who severed ties with him more than four decades ago.......

The man's parents divorced in 1971, when he was 18. His father broke off contact the following year and later wrote a will naming a female acquaintance as his heir.

The court found that although the father broke off contact, he fulfilled his parental duties while his son was a minor."

This ruling in an absolute travesty. In a nation that doles out taxpayer-given money like candy to untold amounts of non-European immigrants and spurious asylum-seekers without batting an eye (including  "deadbeat Dads"), the state can extort more money from a man who received nothing from his father other than what he was naturally required to provide to his child.

When one becomes a parent, he does not deserve any credit or payback for feeding, housing, and clothing his child in his pre-adult years. The mandate for this is from the Natural Law and thus predates any governmental body. A government can legally define the age at which a child is considered emancipated and require that a parent provide basic necessitates until age is reached, but it cannot posses the authority to order someone to be financially liable for the parent for doing what is not optional. By bringing a child into the world, one is bound to ensure that he is provided with the basic necessities of life. The child owes nothing for this; he did not ask to be conceived. 

When a parent makes every effort to be a good father or mother to a youth, then the child has a moral obligation to help his parents but no body can dictate that he do so. When that support continues in adulthood, then the moral obligation becomes even greater. But when the state decides that bureaucrats have the authority to track down and find family members to make them financially possible for debts incurred by another family member - even a parent, the state is not hiding the fact that it is totalitarian. 

Europeans take great pleasure in reminding us that they have universal health care. Well, here in the US, the state can go after the estate of a dead person in order to obtain reimbursement for unpaid medical bills, but it would (thus far) not even attempt to tell a child that he owes any amount of money for his parents bills. It would be the grossest of violations of the Rule of Law and an patent theft of one's property.