When asked if parents would sue their adult children (hereinafter ‘children’) for maintenance, many people would instinctively answer, ‘No’. They would probably point to reasons such as love, ‘face’, culture, or the inappropriateness of using the formal legal system to govern child-parent relationships. These answers would comport with socio-legal scholarship on law and continuing relations, that is, generally speaking, people are less likely to use the law against parties with whom they have or desire to have ongoing bonds. However, I find something quite different and far more complicated in my article published in Law & Social Inquiry.