SUMMARY
One of the fundamental social, socio-forming institutions, which are strictly protected, including through the relevant rules of the current law, is the longstanding institute of support for persons who are unable to provide for themselves through the special disability or incapacity at all. A very important socio-institutional and socio-regulatory component of such an institution is a social consensus about the support of people with physical disabilities, which is constantly reproduced and permanently required by social communities. Among many components of the mentioned consensus, of great importance was also the indispensable obligation to carry out the full, decent or at least minimally necessary financial and material and other such support, provided by law and moral and ethical tradition, first by the parents of their young and minor children, and then, in turn, by adult, legally capable children of their older persons, including disabled, socially vulnerable parents. In spite of the necessity of careful treatment by society towards the disabled, in each country, this obligation is regulated in different ways. Therefore, it seems appropriate to analyse the obligation to keep disabled persons within the meaning of current international law and other international provisions. Methodology. The goal is solved using the cognitive potential of the system of philosophical, scientific, and special methods. The analysis and synthesis made it possible to identify the signs of incapacity for work and the specifics of the responsibilities for the maintenance of disabled persons. The methods of grammatical consideration and interpretation of legal norms have contributed to the identification of universal legal constructs that can be used in the national legislation of any sovereign country of the world. The comparative-legal method allowed determining the directions of development of national legislation of sovereign countries in order to bring them into conformity with generally accepted international standards. Practical implications. The peculiarities of the social and legal status of disabled persons require scientists to develop consistent measures of the proper legal protection of their rights. This requires establishing a clear contentspectral relationship between the concepts of such vulnerable, helpless social-group categories as “older persons”, “persons with disabilities”, and “mentally retarded persons”, which implies a broad socio-physical contextual concept of “disabled person”. The national legislation of each sovereign country should provide for a mechanism developed at the international level for collecting funds for the benefit of certain socially vulnerable persons, including the disabled.