Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu waRahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
It is sufficient for your friend to spend on his parents with the intention of paying off what he owes them.
Answering your question, Abderrahman Ibn Nasser Al-Barrak, a famous Saudi scholar, states:
It is sufficient for your friend to spend on his parents with the intention of paying off what he owes them. In fact, he will have been spending on them from their money, and he does not have to tell them the real situation.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.
Source: www.islamqa.info.