We have always seen grandparents often taking care of their grandchildren, at least in India but never heard of paying them for doing so. Not all countries and grandparents are the same, though. For instance, this Chinese woman filed a legal case demanding 192,000 yuan (approximately Rs 22 lakh) as childcare expenses from Hu, her daughter, and her son-in-law, Zhu. Duan who is the grandmother of the child provided care for her daughter’s kid from February 2018 to July 2023, and now wants her expenses paid.
Duan, from the city of Guangan in Sichuan province in southwestern China, took care of the child for five years and now went to court to sue her daughter and son-in-law. The court ordered the couple to pay her Duan a childcare charge of 82,500 yuan (US$11,300).
Hu and her husband, Zhu both are employed in Chengdu and did not have time to care for their son. The couple approached Hu’s mother and since 2018, Duan has been caring for her grandchild. The couple handed her a 2,000 yuan childcare cost and a 1,000 yuan (US$135) monthly stipend. The grandmother looked after the kid for five years without complaint.
She ultimately concluded in July that her efforts had not been appropriately recognised and she deserved much more than she had been paid. She then requested that the couple give her 192,000 yuan more as her childcare charge.
Hu thought her mother had unreasonable and unreasonable expectations of them. Hu agreed to pay her mother 50,000 yuan (US$6,800) without asking her husband, and they signed an agreement. Despite her mother’s repeated requests, the daughter did not completely pay her. Duan then sued the couple and took them to the court. The court said that Duan had no legal obligation to raise her grandson and that she was entitled to a daycare fee from the parents of her grandchild but reduced it to 82,500 yuan.
According to Zhu, Duan sued for the childcare fee because Zhu now has a divorce dispute. “The person she wants to sue is me,” he said.
