Taiwan dentist ordered to pay his mother nearly $1 million

Disavowing ones filial duties comes at a price

In Taiwan filial piety isn’t just a norm — it’s federal law. Exempting victims of child abuse or neglect, all Taiwanese citizens are bound by the criminal code to care for their aging parents.

On Tuesday, a court in Taiwan decided to honor a contract between a woman and her two sons that obligated them to eventually repay her for the cost of their professional training, the Liberty Times reported.

Apprehensive of being abandoned in her old age and left without a viable source of financial support, the mother, identified only by her surname Luo, took preemptive action. In 1997, with her sons barely 20 and both in dental school, she stipulated in writing the terms of their filial debt: once they opened their own, independent dental practice, they would owe 60% of the net profit on their monthly income to her until she had received a sum totaling 50 million new Taiwan dollars, or about $1.7 million.

Raised by affluent doctors, Luo married young into a military family, and opened a dental clinic subsidized by her parents, where her husband practiced until their separation in 1990.

After they divorced, she worked as a single mother to support the children, both of whom she put through dental school. Her younger son was particularly laborious to raise, she claimed in court. He was an unwilling student, often ill. She invested in private tutoring and a home sauna to keep him from veering off the rails. While he prepared for the college entrance exam, she prepared all of his meals and late-night snacks.

By Luo’s account, her sons began to distance themselves from her during dental school, under the corrupting influence of their respective girlfriends, whom they lived with in an apartment rented with her money and serviced by a maid she had hired. Shortly thereafter, dubious of their loyalties and of the capricious nature of gratitude, Luo drafted a contract laying out their minimum filial duties, to which they consented.

When after obtaining their dental certifications and opening their own practice, her sons proved reluctant to fulfill the terms of their agreement, she threatened to sue them. Her elder son relented and paid her a settlement amounting to just under $170,000.

His younger brother, surnamed Zhu — he of the midnight snacks and personal sauna — held to his defiance and ultimately paid the full, righteous price, a sum of almost $1 million. He argued that his mother extorting money for the labor required to raise him — even after he had staffed her practice in the years following dental school graduation — was at odds with Taiwanese law.

That line of reasoning passed muster in the court of original jurisdiction, which according to Apple Daily awarded Luo a modest settlement of about $60,000. On appeal, however, the Supreme Court was ultimately unsympathetic, holding that Zhu was a legal adult when he signed the contract and that his dental practice was lucrative enough for him to honor its terms without suffering considerable harm.

[Images via Getty / CNA]