This chapter argues that responsible relative laws were one strategy states employed to contest federal efforts to modernize relief programs and limit state and local authority. Fiscal control and home rule were central to states’ resistance. Conflicts often arose between officials and agencies at all levels of government: local, state, and federal. In the post–World War II years, states strengthened requirements for relatives, especially adult children, to provide support in Old Age Assistance; they established or strengthened provisions to recoup OAA costs from recipients’ estates or required property liens as a condition of eligibility. States’ commitment to support requirements in the post–World War II era were part of the larger backlash against escalating public assistance costs, and OAA is a central target of this backlash. The goal was to ensure that family resources were exhausted before public support was provided in the name of fiscal control.

As Americans have monitored federalism, they struggled with how a government based on sovereignty divided between nation and states might function. The Constitution’s shared sovereignty created an inherently dynamic federalism with almost continuous debates over the balance of power, making this testing of the balance of federalism and monitoring government central to the American constitutional order. Many constitutional debates involved the protection of slavery, yet other interests including debt, taxation, and police powers also played vital roles in shaping American federalism. State resistance to the national government utilizing the constitutional tool of interposition arose when the disequilibrium of federalism was most keenly felt and states needed to resist perceived constitutional overreaching by the national government. This state legislative resistance shaped the broader American political conversation about constitutional rights and jurisdiction and this debate over federalism is arguably a strength and not a weakness of the framers’ constitutional design,inviting each generation to determine what the appropriate constitutional balance should be.