Parents cut ties with adopted daughter after threats

A couple has formally cut ties with their 30-something-year-old adopted daughter, after forcing her parents to hand over almost their entire life savings, Minhang District People's Court said Thursday.

Last year, the husband and wife, now in their 60s, looked to the courts for 100,000 yuan ($15,800) in compensation and permission to end their relationship with their daughter, who was taken in by the couple a month after she was born.

The couple said that they wanted to have nothing to do with her after she nearly empted their life savings of 700,000 yuan in recent years.

After leaving home in her 20s in 2001, their daughter, who never had a stable job, would return only to ask her parents for money, which she would squander at bars.

In 2008, she demanded 300,000 yuan from them to start her own business, before repeatedly threatening her parents to give her more money.

Last year, the parents finally decided that enough was enough.

But when their daughter failed to appear for trial, the court ruled that the torn relationship could not be fixed and granted the couple legal permission to end their relationship with her.

However, since the couple failed to prove their daughter had threatened them after moving out, she was not ordered to compensate her parents.