Constitutional Court asks Congress to take measures not to neglect divorced women

T he Constitutional Court, in Judgment T-462-21, with a presentation by the now former judge Alberto Rojas Ríos, asked Congress to take whatever measures it deems necessary in relation to the lack of protection that women face after a divorce and everything related to alimony.

This request comes after the Constitutional Court ruled a guardianship in favor of a woman who demanded from the Military Forces Retirement Fund (CREMIL) the payment of the alimony that she had been receiving since her husband's divorce in 1994, from his pension, but which was suspended in January 2019 after her husband's death .

According to the citizen, an 80-year-old woman with multiple health problems, “her subsistence income came mainly from the monthly maintenance quota she received in attention to the exclusive care work she did with her family during her marriage.”

Given this, the Ninth Review Chamber noted that the lady's case is an example of discrimination and economic violence suffered by women in the age group of the third and fourth age.

“This whole situation occurs to a greater extent in long and lasting marriages. Here, the absence of remuneration for care work and its concentration on women subjects wives during their youth and much of their productive lives to the plans of their husbands and to exclusion from the productive system, while in their old age they are abandoned and unable to access the social security system,” he explained. the sentence.

According to the High Court, the alimony payments claimed by women in marriage and after divorce become a measure to lessen the negative effects of economic violence and discrimination they suffer throughout their lives.

“The principle of joint responsibility that the State has makes it possible to impose this burden on the pension entity that administers a common fund under the medium premium regime, since it is a way of countering various forms of violence or structural and indirect discrimination against women,” said the high court.

However, this protection of food never implies leaving the pension entity without tools, since it has the power to establish that the need does indeed persist and, if it is not found accredited, it can cease it, as well as to warn if there is disappointment in the social security system.

Finally, in the judgment, the Court gave CREMIL five days to order the payment of 25% of the pension allowance of the former spouse of the claimant for payment of alimony.

In recent days, the Court also, through judgment C-111-22, determined that not only as a result of a process of nullity of a marriage can one claim compensation for damages, but that it can now also be claimed by those involved in divorce proceedings, thus following the line of jurisprudence that it has been adopting in the last few years.

According to lawyer Germán Alex Navas, consulted by El Espectador, “the innovative aspect of the last ruling is that the Constitutional Court found support in article 389 of the general code of the process, specifically in its fifth paragraph.”

What the judgment does is to extend this paragraph, which originally can be read that “the sentence to pay the damages paid by the spouse who by his fault would have resulted in the nullity of the bond, in favor of the other, if he had requested it”.

Thus, according to lawyer Navas, what the Constitutional Court does is broaden the spectrum of the norm, since “given the similarity that exists in the two proceedings (nullity and divorce) and given the inequality that women face, then the Court concludes, it is also possible to allow them the corresponding compensation of prejudice”.

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