Family Ties: More Adult Children Are Supporting Their Parents Financially

Sue Martin does her best to be a dutiful and loving daughter.

So when her 84-year-old mother finally retired from a family electronics business -- at age 82 -- Martin bought the small three- bedroom ranch house next door to her own home in Claymont, Del., and moved her mother in.

It hasn't been easy. Martin, who's divorced, had planned to retire next year from her job as a legal assistant at a pharmaceutical company. But while she has a retirement fund of her own, her mother does not.

So now, Martin plans to work, indefinitely, to help cover the portion of the mortgage and living expenses that her mother's Social Security and small allotment of food stamps don't.

"She's still very independent, just broke," says Martin, who's 59.

Indeed, Betty Gresick is spry and healthy. She's an avid piano and bridge player and is able to drive to visit friends in the Delaware town where she and her late husband ran the family business -- one that, unfortunately, had little net worth when she sold it.

"He didn't look past his nose when it came to the future," Gresick says of her husband. "So here I am with nothing to show for those years."