What are the views of the Torah and rabbis regarding a 40 year-old son who is considered by the lawyers to be a spendthrift. Are his father and/or siblings responsible to pay for the son's large debt ? MeyerEzer@aol.com .

no, they are not responsible

Why? He is grown up now and he should be able to take care of himself. His father and also his brothers have no obligation or right to even dabble into his affairs. He is not a child, let him be and work things out on his own. They are doing him more harm than good. Anyway, this is the way of enabling in which is certainly more wrong in the eyes of Torah than not helping him. He is not poor and he is creating this problem by himself. The medrash speaks of a person who takes help or charity when it is not need and the severe effects on all is not something anyone would want to happen to them.

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Originally posted by Meyer Alpert:
What are the views of the Torah and rabbis regarding a 40 year-old son who is considered by the lawyers to be a spendthrift. Are his father and/or siblings responsible to pay for the son's large debt ? MeyerEzer@aol.com .

As stated one has no obligation to pay off one's siblings debts. However, if a jew faces imprisonment because of his debts, no matter how incurred, there is no restriction on giving charity. However, there is a limit if it is a continuous habit. We have a principle of love thy neighbor as thyself which means we give charity and do not have to examine if the person asking is really worthy of it.
We also hold that charity begins at home (first your family, then the poor of your city, then the poor of the rest of the world). However giving charity to the Jews living in Israel has a special status. (I personally devote all of my salary (actually more than my salary if you have ever heard of overdraft) to helping Jews to live in Israel.)


Aryeh Shore

This is not a Torah-related response; just personal opinion.

IF what the lawyer says is true, then the parents should not continuously bail him out. But how do you KNOW that what the lawyer says is true? Sometimes even family members may assume they know the truth, when they don't. I think it is always best to give the benefit of the doubt.

Here is an example. I know of a family where the husband is extremely responsible, hard-working, and well respected at every job he's had. Over the years, he has had a string of unlucky breaks that no one would believe. Every time he just about pulls himself out of debt, the company he's working for has mass layoffs, or something of the like. Also, the government keeps taking tens of thousands of dollars out of his paychecks every year mistakenly and a series of lawyers have agreed this is unjust yet have not been able to do anything about it. Although his family has lived at about the poverty level for many years, there were only two times he went to family for help. Once was when he had no money to pay the heating bill for the family and it was the dead of winter. The wife's family was approached, and they all got together and decided that to help them would not be to teach them how to help themselves. The wife was told that they KNOW the husband was not trying as hard as he could. The second time was years later, when he had no money to pay for an expensive medication for his young son. (Not expensive by most people's standards, but too expensive for him to afford.) This time the husband's family was approached, and they came back with a response identical to what the wife's family had said years ago. What an insult to assume the husband was not doing all he could to provide medicine for his son! What an insult to assume that no one could be that unlucky: that he must be a spendthrift. It is one thing for outsiders to say that, but imagine how he must have felt when his own parents said it.

This man believes as you do, that it is better to show a man how to fish than to give him a fish. He knows how to fish and is not lazy. But sometimes a person goes from pond to pond, and no fish bite. So please: Take the time to sit down with your son and ask him how he got into this financial bind. Listen to his story. If you can't tell for sure if he is lying or not, give him the benefit of the doubt. Even if you are SURE he's lying (or truthfully says he has been a spendthrift), give him an amount to cover basic necessities for three or four months (about the time it might take to find a good job or see the results of money spent more wisely). Make sure he has a good plan for the future, and if he doesn't, guide him. Let him know that you believe in him. The gift you will give him that is better than money is his knowledge that you still respect him.