Quest for Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens: A Socio-Legal Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53724/lrd/v8n3.3Keywords:
Parents, Senior Citizens, Maintenance, Welfare, Family, StateAbstract
In Indian cultural ethos, parents’ care and well-being have been children’s priority in the well-understood family system. With the fast-changing life pattern, it has become necessary to deliberate on providing care and protection to parents and senior citizens in contemporary society. When individuals fail in fulfilling their pious and legal obligations towards parents, then it is the state that steps in the way and provides maintenance and looks after the well-being of the senior citizens through a formal legal system. The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 is the legislation that provides a legal mechanism for the maintenance and welfare of parents and senior citizens. This paper exhibits a debate on personal and public laws where certain pious, proprietary, and legal obligations of a son, grandson, and great-grandson, if not obeyed, then the public law enters the family affairs and provides due legal protection to parents and senior citizens. Further, in this paper, the authors attempt to analyse the legal provisions and judicial pronouncements on the maintenance and welfare of parents and senior citizens within family relations, failing which a formal legal mechanism as provided by the state in the said Act takes care of parents and senior citizens. At the end of the paper, the authors attempt to suggest suitable solutions to provide maintenance and welfare of parents and senior citizens, from the socio-legal perspective.
Metrics
References
Section 2 (b) of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 defines “Maintenance” as “maintenance includes provision for food, clothing, residence, and medical attendance and treatment”.
Section 2 (a) of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 defines “Children” as “children include son, daughter, grandson, and granddaughter but does not include a minor”.
Section 2 (g) of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 defines “Relative” as “relative means any legal heir of the childless senior citizen who is not a minor and is in possession of or would inherit his property after his death”.
Section 2 (f) of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 defines “Property” as “property means property of any kind, whether movable or immovable, ancestral or self-acquired, tangible or intangible and includes rights or interests in such property”.
Section 2 (i) of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 defines “State Government” as “state government, in relation to a union territory, means the administrator thereof appointed under Article 239 of the Constitution.
Section 2 (d) of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 defines “Parent” as “parent means father or mother whether biological, adoptive or step father or stepmother, as the case may be, whether or not the father or the mother is a senior citizen”.
Section 2 (h) of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 defines “Senior Citizen” as “senior citizen means any person being a citizen of India, who has attained the age of sixty years or above”.
Section 2 (k) of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 defines “Welfare” as “welfare means provision for food, health care, recreation centres, and other amenities necessary for the senior citizens”.
Sections 4-18 of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007.
Ibid, Section 19.
Ibid, Section 20.
Ibid, Sections 20-23.
Section 2 (j) of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 defines “Tribunal” as “Tribunal means the Maintenance Tribunal constituted under section 7 of the Act”. The provision for the constitution of the Maintenance Tribunal is provided in Section 7, whereas the provision for the constitution of the Appellate Tribunal is provided in Section 15 of the Act of 2007.
Ibid, Section 7(2) of the Act of 2007.
Id., Section 17 of the Act of 2007.
Id., Section 18 of the Act of 2007.
Id., Section 5 of the Act of 2007.
(2019) 2 SCC 636, 645.
A Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of India, former Union Law Minister and Member of Parliament of India.
(2019) 2 SCC 636.
Ibid, pp. 651-652.
Section 23 of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007.
WP (C) No. 18335 of 2023 decided on October 6, 2023.
Ibid, para 1.
Id., para 3.
Id., para 14.
Id., para 18.
Id., para 25.
WP (c) No. 29678 of 2023, decided on September 12, 2023: 2023 SCC Online All 2138.
Id., para 5.
Ibid, para 5.
Writ Petition No. 6022 of 2022.
Ibid, para 45.
Criminal Revision No. 535 of 2023 decided on January 5, 2024.
Ibid, para 16.
Id., para 16.1.
Id., para 18.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
ARK
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Legal Research Development
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
