She spent 25 years dedicated to domestic chores and taking care of her daughters without any personal or economic recognition and suffering psychological abuse. She also helps in the family business without any compensation. Now, after divorcing in 2020, a Court of First Instance in Vélez-Málaga has ruled that Ivana Moral (Barcelona, ??1974) has the right to be compensated with more than 200,000 euros for this invisible work carried out for more than two decades.
“I have felt stepped on, subjected and abused,” Ivana Moral, 48, tells La Vanguardia. She was born in Barcelona, ??but raised in Martos (Jaén), she married just 20 “very much in love” although she soon began to realize that her life was not exactly going to be a fairy tale. “My ex-husband has gym businesses and the day after we got married I was already working on them,” she explains. She took care of everything related to housework and she also taught classes. And not only that: “There were days that I worked ten hours because after classes, I had to clean the gym.” But all this work never had, she assures her, any economic compensation or even another type of moral recognition. She “didn’t even have a bank card.”
Moral depended on the cash that the husband wanted to provide. “We both worked, but the houses, the car or the motorcycle were his.” It was never an equal relationship, she explains.
Despite the abuse, “fear” of where she would go with her daughters (who are now 19 and 14 years old) gripped this woman for years. There were infidelities and “psychological abuse”. And beyond her economic aspect, her ex-husband made her a “totally dependent” person. He was, he says, “controlling, domineering and manipulative” as well as an alcoholic. And because of her economic dependence, she had to experience situations such as having to ask her for money for menstrual supplies and having to explain to her “I had my period.”
Ivana lived in depression and assures that there were several suicide attempts. It was upon awakening from one of these episodes, with her daughters present, that she decided to separate from her despite the economic abyss that was presented to her. “I separated to protect the rights of my daughters,” she says. In fact, they were the ones who encouraged her to cut the relationship. And she did it in 2020 with no more income than the little more than 200 euros that belonged to her for renting a flat halfway with her ex.
Despite not having studied, Morales has always been a woman with concerns and discovered the article of the Civil Code (article 1438) that contemplated compensation for the work carried out in household chores while married in separate property, as was his case. . But in her legal journey, she found lawyers who assured her that she was wasting her time claiming. She until she found her lawyer, Laura Fuentes, with whom she has managed to have her benefit recognized. Fuentes is confident that the case of her client will lead to an avalanche of lawsuits from women demanding their right to be compensated.
After the divorce ESO has been taken and has continued training. “I have abilities and aptitudes to do many things”, she proudly affirms. And she has worked at everything to be able to survive together with her two daughters: cleaning stairs, caring for the elderly, being a children’s entertainer… In addition, she has overcome cancer that “stopped her” from taking the oppositions at the post office, although once the health bump had passed , once again has this job objective on the horizon. “I want to get ahead,” she explains.
He acknowledges that the 200,000 euros of the sentence provide him with a “ball of oxygen” to face the future with more calm, much more than he had in his 25 years of marriage. Although she points out that the recognition is no more than the minimum wage despite having worked like the most.
And she is pleased that her court ruling encourages other women who, like her, have spent decades in the shadow of domestic work. “I talk to the media so that women are encouraged to claim what is theirs,” she says. “Let them get their act together and vindicate… There are many helpless women”,
