Ex wife earns £130,000 for housework duties

A divorced man has been ordered to pay his former wife €150,000 (£130,000) by a court in Spain in order to compensate her for 22 years of housework. The figure also includes the cost of caring for the couple's two daughters.

Although the concept of compensation for taking care of the marital home is not new in Spanish law, lawyers for the woman said it was the largest settlement of its kind.

The woman's legal representative, Manuel Santos Pérez-Moneo, said; "It is the first ruling in which a court has set such a high amount for a spousal maintenance after a divorce."

Three Spanish judges justified their decision to award compensation to the woman saying that she had given up her €14,000-a-year job with the telecoms company Telefónica in 1996 to devote herself exclusively to running the family home. They also cited a previous ruling by Spain's supreme court.

Within in the ruling, the judges said: "Housework is considered as a form of contribution to common finances when one of the spouses can only contribute in such a way, in accordance with the principle of equality under Article 23 of the Constitution."

The León provincial court ruled that the man, a businessman, can either pay the compensation as a lump sum or do so month by month, in amounts no lower than €500.

Under the decision of a lower court, which the woman had appealed too, her former husband was only ordered to pay her the sum of €1,200 a month for a period of three years. She was also entitled to use the shared home for three months. This has now been superceded. 

PM Law 

Sheffield Solicitors