“I have no money, so you pay”... Daughter saddles her father’s relatives with funeral costs for the father she had cut off contact with [What do you think?]

[Financial News] The biological daughter, a direct descendant, is drawing outrage after demanding that her father’s relatives—including a fifth-degree relative she had never met—cover the entire funeral bill, which amounted to nearly 8 million won, for her biological father, with whom she had long been estranged.
According to JTBC’s “Case Leader” on the 18th, a man in his twenties, identified as A, who lives with his maternal grandmother, submitted his story after a baffling recent experience, saying he wanted to hear what others thought.
According to A, his maternal grandmother recently received word from the local community center that her biological older brother had died in an unexpected accident. The center urged relatives to visit, saying that no one was keeping vigil at the funeral hall. A’s family had also lived like strangers to the deceased, having had no contact with him for a long time. But believing they should fulfill their final duty as family, A, his mother and his maternal grandmother went together to the funeral hall. After being contacted, the deceased’s biological daughter—and A’s fifth-degree relative, his mother’s cousin—arrived at the wake later. The daughter, too, had been out of contact with her father for a long time.
The conflict erupted when the deceased’s daughter abruptly asked A’s family to pay the funeral expenses on her behalf. “I can’t afford it right now. I have no other family, and it’s been a long time since I cut off contact with my father,” she said, pressing her maternal relatives to cover the costs.
When A refused, saying that his family had also lived without contact and had come only to fulfill their final duty, the daughter again tried to shift the costs onto them, saying, “Isn’t this about asking you to do your final duty with money?”
When A could no longer stand it and voiced his displeasure, saying, “Honestly, aren’t we meeting for the first time today? We’re less than strangers to each other, so why do you keep telling us what to do?”, the daughter turned the blame back on him, saying, “You little brat, you’re really talking back,” and “My father must be shedding tears of blood in heaven.”
A said he felt deeply wronged: “The funeral hall costs alone are about 8 million won, and the person who’s his daughter boldly tried to dump the bill on us, saying she had no money. My mother and grandmother were both left speechless.”
Experts appearing on the program agreed that the daughter, as a direct descendant, should bear the funeral expenses before anyone else.
Seung Jae-hyun, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute of Criminology and Justice, stressed, “Under civil law, the primary duty of support between parents and children is completely different in nature from the secondary duty of support between siblings. Children are the ones who must take responsibility for their parents’ funeral expenses as a first priority.”
Psychology professor Park Sang-hee also pointed out, “As a rule, the closest direct family members in terms of degree of kinship should bear the costs. If their financial circumstances really make that difficult, they should seek government or local-government support for a funeral for someone with no known relatives, or choose a funeral without a wake. It is unfair to ask distant relatives for help.”

Netizens who heard the story also unleashed harsh criticism, saying, “It’s shameless for a direct descendant to demand funeral expenses from a fifth-degree relative who is less than a stranger to them.”


[email protected] Moon Young-jin Reporter