Husband ordered to pay ex-wife for 25 years of housework in Spain divorce settlement
A divorce settlement in Spain is stirring up conversation about unequal division of domestic labor after a woman’s ex-husband was ordered to pay her back for 25 years of housework that allowed his business to thrive.
That amount equals $216,000, Spanish Judge Laura Ruiz Alaminos decided in a ruling made public Tuesday, March 7, just one day before International Women’s Day, according to i News in the United Kingdom.
The settlement is based on “the minimum monthly professional wage for the quarter century the couple were married,” the outlet reported. It would amount to about $8,640 per year.
The ruling recognizes Ivana Moral’s labor as worthy of compensation, since she “was deprived of any possible career due to her exclusive dedication to the home and family,” which paved the way for her husband’s business to take off and for him to “exponentially [increase] his assets,” according to Euro News.
Moral told Nius Diario she felt “economically threatened, worthless,” and as if she was “always depending on the same person” until she decided she’d had enough in 2020 and took her husband to court to “defend” her teenage daughters.
“I was supporting my husband in his work and in the family as a mother and a father,” she told i News. “I was never allowed access to his financial affairs; everything was in his name.”
The couple’s “marriage was governed by a separation of property regime, which specified that whatever each party earned was theirs alone, which in this case would have left the wife with no access to any of the wealth acquired through years of partnership,” Agence France-Presse reported.
During their marriage, he started a successful gym business, bought a Porsche, Range Rover, BMW motorbikes, and a 70-hectare olive oil farm valued at $4.2 million, i News reported.
She told Cadena Ser radio that her husband “did not want her to work outside the home” unless it was in the gyms he owned, where she was permitted to clean and handle “public relations and acted as a monitor,” AFP reported.
On Wednesday, March 8, a popular TikToker who creates content around the fair division of domestic labor in households shared the story with her followers and called it a “record” case.
“The entire world runs on domestic labor,” Laura Danger said in videos posted to Instagram and TikTok. “We have nothing without domestic labor.”
Danger referenced a 2020 Oxfam International study that found women and girls take on more than three-quarters of unpaid care work “and make up only about two-thirds of the paid care workforce.”
The study found they carry out 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each day.
“If you took all of the domestic labor done by women and girls globally every single year and then you paid them minimum wage for doing it, it would rack up to $10.8 trillion,” Danger said in the video posted to TikTok and Instagram.
“This ruling represents the labor of women in the shadows,” she added, quoting Moral’s attorney.
In the comments, many women shared that the amount reached in the settlement was not a high enough compensation for Moral’s 25 years of domestic labor.
“Good for her but that seems low for 25 years,” someone wrote. “And being a home [maker] isn’t minimum wage work. That’s several jobs/roles all in one. But so many get nothing so glad she even got that.”
“That’s IT, for 25 years of being nanny, chef, housekeeper, personal assistant, chauffeur?” another user asked. “It’s a start, but that amount should be way higher.”
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