"old obligations" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it to refer to obligations that have existed for a long time and still have to be fulfilled. For example, "We must honor our old obligations before we consider taking on any new ones."
Maybe my mother's growing acceptance of her mortality has emancipated her from old obligations.
Governments, of course, can always pass new laws that sweep away old obligations to provide services.
People think of bankruptcy as a way to wipe the slate clean of old obligations, but that's only half true.
In an interview, Deborah Hopkins, Lucent's chief financial officer, said the new debt would subordinate Lucent's old obligations.
This was reflected in the original bill: Whitehall's old obligations to "provide" hospitals were largely replaced with requirements to "promote" services.
Two people involved with the bidding, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of restrictions on the discussion of the process, said they believed virtually all of the final bids would require a bankruptcy filing that would allow any new owner to proceed without the old obligations.
The Brazilian law maintained the old obligation of at least 11 years of formal educational for being an OHT.
At the deal's heart would be an informal understanding that the private sector holders of Greek government bonds might be persuaded to roll over their debts, or extend new loans when their older obligations come due.
This new conception of the good life, defined for centuries by association with religious virtue, had as its center the sovereign individual: liberated from older obligations to guild and church, his pursuit of self-interest would be henceforth assisted by continuous technical innovation, commercial expansion and the political institutions of the nation-state.
Now, in the midst of a debate about recently incurred Greek debts, the government in Athens suddenly wants Germany to settle some much older obligations, both financial and moral, as well.Germans don't like being reminded of the past by others, because they have their own very formal rituals of recollection.
In essence, privatization is not necessarily a negative phenomenon, especially when the state has proven ineffective in sustaining its age-old obligations.
