Italy’s top appeals court has told a 32-year-old man that he does not have the right to financial support from his father, in a case that has made headlines in a country where millions rely on the bank of mum and dad. 

The unemployed man, whose name was withheld for privacy reasons, has been living with his mother in Sicily since she and his father divorced several years ago. 

The mother wanted to keep receiving a monthly sum from her ex-husband to provide for their son, and maintain the right for the pair to live in the family home. 

Judges initially ruled in her favour in 2018, but this was overturned on appeal in 2020 and upheld by the Court of Cassation, Italy’s top court, in a verdict published this month.

Appealing to the “principle of self-responsibility,” the court said a son should not “abuse the right to be supported by a parent beyond reasonable limits of time and measure”. 

Extended parental support could only be justified for offspring who are still in education or training, it said.

The Sicilian man in question last attended professional training courses in 2012, it was reported. 

Judges, who did not specify how much money the man has until now been receiving from his father, said there were no “objective or subjective circumstances that could justify his inability to enter into the labour market”.

Family-oriented Italians have long been known to struggle to leave the parental nest, usually due to the difficulty of finding a job in a country with a stagnant economy that typically offers low-paid and insecure positions to young people. 

On average, Italians leave home aged around 30, compared with a European Union average of around 26. That average falls to around 24 in France and Germany, and a low of 17.5 in Sweden.