Health Minister Nina Warken’s (CDU) plans are causing debate: she wants to abolish the current income threshold of 100,000 euros gross annual income for parental maintenance. In the future, children with lower incomes would also be required to pay if their parents depend on social assistance in a nursing home. As the newspaper reports, the author considers the move fundamentally wrong.
So far, the maintenance obligation for children only applies from a gross annual income of more than 100,000 euros or a monthly net income of over 5,000 euros. This regulation dates back to the Relatives Relief Act. Warken now wants to remove this threshold to relieve public coffers. Critics fear that many families would be disproportionately burdened.
The author of the commentary argues that care costs often exceed the financial means of children anyway. Many relatives already voluntarily care for their parents. Expanding the payment obligation would send the wrong signal and burden the so-called sandwich generation, which has to care for both children and aging parents.
Warken’s proposal contradicts the previous trend, which aimed to relieve children of the maintenance obligation. The Relatives Relief Act of 2020 had raised the threshold to 100,000 euros. Now a reversal is to come. The author calls on the minister to reconsider the proposal and instead strengthen long-term care insurance.
Source: www.zeit.de
