My prediction is the parents’ public pressure will blow up in their face, and this will shine a spotlight on the unfair expectations of Indian families… and perhaps hasten the end of parents’ domination of their children. Good job, Prasads!
The mother’s remark in the BBC article about this being the end of the family name implies that this is either their only child, or at least their only son. If it’s the former, it’s a bit rich for them to get all bent out of shape about their kid essentially having one fewer child than they did. If it’s the latter–if they have daughters who might yet have children-- it seems all that other stuff they said about wanting to love and care for a grandchild isn’t their real motivation.
@ekedolphin and @snowthx both refer to the 61 year old father and 57 year old mother as “elderly”. Really? Maybe their longing for grandchildren makes them seem elderly.
But I certainly didn’t see my parents as elderly when they were those ages. And now that I’m in that age range myself I don’t think that I or my friends are elderly.
No I don’t think so. Maybe a US lawyer could comment. But AIUI the system in the US is the same as where I am - there is no unilateral screening done by the court system without a hearing.
If you mean you won’t get a trial date, then you are probably right. But you will get a hearing - even if only to have your matter dismissed.
Is that really true? No triage whatsoever? If someone files a lawsuit consisting of “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” repeated over and over, that gets a hearing in a courtroom? Is the defendant obliged to hire a lawyer and show up?
My experience is Australian but at least here, if something was absolute gibberish, and the filing clerk happened to notice it was gibberish, and brought it to the attention of the registrar, and the registrar concluded it was gibberish, they might do something. But if it’s in basically the correct form, and the filing fee is paid, generally it gets filed. In some courts the file is then literally not looked at by anyone till someone makes it happen.
Now in some of our courts there is a slightly more proactive approach and an initial hearing date is set as soon as something is filed. But even there what is likely to happen is that the assigned judge will only look at the file shortly before the hearing. And instead of dismissing it out of hand, they are likely to wait to the initial hearing date, see if the applicant turns up, give them a lecture if they do, and (whether they do or not) dismiss it then.
Yeah, it was inelegant to refer to them as “elderly”, but I was struggling to differentiate them from the younger couple. Just using the term “parents” seemed confusing to me in this context (do you mean the parents of the prospective parents, of the parents of the yet-to-be-conceived, in which the other couple are the yet-to-be-grandparents?). It just seemed simpler to call them “elderly”, but you are right they are not really that either.
So if they’re in their 60s, couldn’t they adopt a (“grand”)child?
Sorry, I have really bad attitude about these parents. Having been raised with a lot of traditions and societal rules, I have NO patience with them. I can’t wait to read that the son and daughter-in-law have been given sizable donations so that they can move away.
It’s basically not considered the couple’s choice in Indian society.
If there are medical issues they will pay for extreme fertility treatments. Or else, they will scheme to ostracise or get rid of the daughter-in-law. It’s not unheard of in India for daughters-in-law who fail to produce grandsons to meet with fatal “accidents.”
If the lawsuit if properly filed and served on the defendant, then yes, they’ll have to file a motion to dismiss it. They may not have to hire a lawyer, depending on how bad the complaint is and how sophisticated the defendant is. A simple “The Complaint fails to assert any valid claims” would probably do it in the case of a want-to-be grandparent. As for a “hearing,” it wouldn’t necessarily involve coming to the courthouse. In some jurisdictions, many motions are decided “on the briefs” and without argument.
Generally in the U.S. when a civil suit is filed, the defendant has 30 days to file an answer or a demurrer. An answer admits or denies the allegations in the complaint; a demurrer essentially says “so what?” That is, it doesn’t matter whether the allegations are true because they fail to state a cause of action.
If this family lived in the U.S., and if the parents hired a marginally competent attorney, I imagine he’d plead something like breach of contract (plaintiffs paid for defendant’s flight school, wedding, etc. with the agreement that he’d give them grandchildren in return), promissory estoppel (just in case that’s not a valid contact, they still performed their end in reliance on it, so equity demands some compensation), and maybe intentional infliction of emotional distress (a tort claim-- the kids’ conduct in refusing to reproduce is so outrageous that it caused the parents to suffer extreme emotional harm!)
The next step would not be to set a hearing, though; it would be for the son and DIL to either hire a lawyer or respond in pro per–or to just ignore it until the 30 days lapse. Generally, failing to timely file an answer or a demurrer would result in a default judgment for the plaintiff. However, the judge still has an obligation to review the complaint rather than just rubber-stamping a default judgment on something completely ridiculous. The judge wouldn’t investigate the facts, but if even assuming the facts to be true doesn’t make for a legitimate suit, s/he should dismiss the complaint. Perhaps the plaintiff would be given leave to amend their complaint first, to see if they can do better than “waaaaaahhh, I want grandbabeeeeeeeezzzz!!!” Because in the U.S., that wouldn’t fly. In India? I have no idea.
Note that I don’t do torts or contract law, I’m only a lawyer in California so there may be differences in some U.S. jurisdictions (I wouldn’t put it past Louisiana to have some weird French thing they do instead), and this is idle speculation for entertainment purposes only, not legal advice. Please don’t ever ignore a lawsuit you’re named in, no matter how dumb it is.
Very informative, thank you.
Same here in Canada. I had a client who had been served with a Statement of Complaint, who simply did not believe that the Court had accepted it for filing. It was by a pro se plaintiff, but it was in the correct form, written in plain English, had a cause of action, and the filing fee was paid. “Didn’t the court review it? Didn’t they see it was bullshit?” Well, it’s not up to the clerk at the counter to do such a thing. That’s a judge’s job.
India has a culture of filial duty entirely foreign to us in America. A couple of years ago they had a supreme court case where the sons were ordered to give their father an allowance after kicking him out of the house, with the court admonishing them, “don’t forget, you are everything because of him”.
Also, it is a country where the majority still arrange marriages. Note that the parents say they “got the son married” in this story - that probably means not only paying for the honeymoon and possibly the wedding, but also selecting the bride.
~Max
Yes, “got him married” most probably means arranged marriage, considering the figures below from a Dec 2021 article, which were a surprise to me: over 90% of people in their 20s had an arranged marriage.
"In a 2018 survey of more than 160,000 households, 93% of married Indians said that theirs was an arranged marriage. Just 3% had a “love marriage” and another 2% described theirs as a “love-cum-arranged marriage”, which usually indicates that the relationship was set up by the families, and then the couple agreed to get married.
There has been only very slight change over time - 94% of octogenarians had an arranged marriage, and the figure remains over 90% for young couples in their 20s."
Yikes. That is surprising. But as @Max_S mentions, this whole arranged marriage thing is foreign to westerners. However, we should not make any assumptions here. The OP article states that the parents are basically coercing the couple to crank-out a kid or pay a hefty fine. I think that is wrong in any culture.
I’m not sure that helps the (yet-to-be-grand)parents’ case, though. “Well I would have had kids by now, but you made me marry the wrong woman!”. Where “wrong” could mean anything from “she’s infertile” to “I’m just not sexually interested in her”.
Oh, I didn’t link the arranged marriage article as any kind of justification of the parents’ wrongheaded case; it was just to provide background.
I was also thinking of raising the issue of forced marriage, but that may be a hijack. In any case, unfortunately it still happens. I just read a 2015 YA novel about a girl born in the US, brought back to Pakistan and forced into marriage with the “right” man. Googling forced marriage brings up 570 million + hits and a toll-free number for the National Human Trafficking Hotline.
So it’s possible that they were forced to marry, and don’t really want a child together.
I’d tell my parents 'Look, I’m having trouble performing due to the pressure you’re putting on me. We get in the bedroom and I can’t help picturing you two peeking over the edge of the bed, cheering me on. So if you could just never bring it up for a year or two, we’ll see if something can happen then."
They’ve been married six years, so I’d say that excuse has been exhausted.
~Max