The feeling and the law behind maintenance for a university student

The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court recently concluded a dispute between an adult student at university and his parents over maintenance, which has drawn public attention. According to press reports, Lao Wang had a son, Xiao Wang, by his former wife, and the boy was brought up by his mother. After the divorce Lao Wang paid maintenance for Xiao Wang until the boy turned eighteen, and paid nothing thereafter.

In July 2017, having been admitted to university, Xiao Wang asked Lao Wang to continue paying maintenance of 2,100 yuan a month and to meet the cost of accommodation, transport and other expenses during his studies. Lao Wang refused, on the ground that his son was an adult capable of supporting himself. Xiao Wang then brought a suit.

The court of first instance ordered Lao Wang to pay maintenance of 2,000 yuan a month. He appealed to the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court, which reversed the judgment and dismissed the child's claim for maintenance, on the ground that he was capable of supporting himself. The judge observed in the judgment that although most parents, out of affection, morality, habit

and other considerations, go on providing living and education costs for children receiving a university education, that is a moral choice on the parents' part, not a legal duty.

1. The limits of the right

In real life most parents go on supporting adult children who are still studying, and children have grown used to being supported in that way, even taking it for granted, but a practice, however widespread, is not thereby entitled to the court's support. Under Article 21 of the Marriage Law of the People's Republic of

China, parents have a duty to maintain and educate their children, and where parents fail to perform that duty, a child who is a minor or cannot live independently has the right to require them to pay maintenance.

The point of decision in this case is therefore what "a child who cannot live independently" means. The relevant judicial interpretation defines it as "an adult child who is still receiving education at high school level or below, or who has lost, or not entirely lost, his capacity for work and is for reasons not of his own making unable to maintain a normal life". On that basis an eighteen-year-old

university student, being an adult in good health, is not a child whom his parents are under a legal duty to maintain, and the judgment of the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court rested on law.

Many internet users said that tuition is too expensive and study too demanding, that supporting oneself while studying is too harsh a requirement, and argued that the test of "living independently" in the judicial interpretation should be changed. The Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China and the related interpretation use age, the most straightforward of standards, to encourage young adults to stand on their own feet and

take responsibility, and to mark the limits of rights within the family: parents have a duty to maintain and educate their children, and children have a corresponding duty to support and assist their parents, but rights and duties are relative, and even within the closest family a child cannot require his parents to bear an unlimited duty of maintenance.

Given traditional Chinese ideas of family affection, "parents selling the family silver to send a child to university" has come to seem the established norm, so that some young people rely on their parents utterly and fall into the habit of holding out a hand to them, which runs entirely counter to the purpose of the legislation. The judge's decision, on the one hand, serves

to spread knowledge of the law — parents are under no legal duty to pay maintenance to adult children still at university — and on the other has a broad cautionary value for society, particularly where "boomerang children" are so numerous, so that the younger generation may take heed, learn to stand on their own feet and, more than that, learn to appreciate the parents who have

given so much for them.

2. The harshness of reality

In the public discussion the great majority supported the court, taking the view that adult students should support themselves, and pointing to American students by way of comparison: most Americans become financially independent once they reach adulthood, so why is that so rarely achieved in China? The reason lies in the great difference between the two countries in

the take-up of student loans. By the figures, two thirds of American university students now take student loans, while in China the proportion is no more than 10 per cent. In both countries the basic model is the same: the individual repays the principal and the government subsidises the interest, and the loan broadly covers

tuition, with repayment beginning on graduation and running for several years, ten years or even more than twenty — the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, repaid his student loans from graduation until four years before he was elected. Student loans, it appears, are a commercial project supported by public funds in the United States, whereas in China the scheme is

a poverty-alleviation project which requires not only proof of hardship but approval at level after level by the competent departments; and as a service with a poor return, domestic commercial banks have little incentive to provide it.

At the same time, expecting students to meet the whole cost of university by part-time work is in practice quite unrealistic. Work-study posts on Chinese campuses pay at most the local minimum wage and are limited to eight hours a week, and work outside the campus barely covers the cost of meals. Under China's approach to

education and its institutions, Chinese students do not in practice have the possibility of living independently, personal capacity and the supply and demand of the job market being among the important factors. While urging students to support themselves, then, the realistic feasibility should also be weighed, rather than taking sides without thinking.

Conclusion

As society advances and the times change, the relationship between law and feeling should be weighed in the intricate web of legal relations too. The authority of a convincing judgment comes from whether it commands acceptance. In this case, full consideration of both law and feeling in a maintenance dispute is the key to resolving it. The case is

concluded, but it leaves much to think about.