The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a victim of gender-based violence and recognized her right to receive a widow’s pension for the death of her ex-husband, convicted up to four times for ill-treatment and threats against her. The judges recognize that the final divorce judgment only arrived in 2017 and that his last conviction was in 2011, but they also point out that the real separation took place years before and that, therefore, he has the right to receive this reserved widow’s pension. for victims of gender-based violence when their attacker dies.
Social judges studied the case of a woman married in 1979 and legally separated in 2000, with the courts ruling definitively on the divorce in 2017. During this period, different Catalan courts handed down four convictions against her. for various minor offenses of threats or ill-treatment linked to gender-based violence. Events which began at the end of the 90s and whose last legal conviction dates from 2011.
The convict was then already living with another couple, whom he married shortly before his death at Christmas 2018. His ex-wife’s legal battle then began for Social Security to recognize her right to receive the widow’s pension that he collected according to the law. recognizes women victims of gender-based violence during a legal separation or divorce with a final decision. Both the court and the Superior Court of Catalonia rejected his requests, finding that by the time judges finally ruled on his divorce in 2017, he was no longer a victim of gender-based violence.
The Social Chamber of the Supreme Court understood that the woman “is entitled to the claimed widow’s pension” because the temporal link between the gender-based violence she suffered for years and the breakdown of her marriage “is obvious”. Their legal separation took place in 2000 and they had already filed up to three complaints. That same year, underlines the Supreme Court, the first conviction was pronounced against his ex-partner. “Gender violence continued after the sentence of separation in 2000,” explains the Supreme Court.
“We can only conclude that there was also a reasonable temporal connection with the time of the divorce,” explains the Social Chamber. The magistrates recall that for several years they have been issuing judgments in which they call for a flexible study of the rules and legal deadlines. “Flexible criteria” and “open concepts” which, as the Supreme Court has said for several years, “allow better attention to situations of need”. In previous resolutions, for example, the same court has authorized the recovery of this pension even if there is no conviction for gender-based violence.
