“He has complied with nothing. Not money, not visits, not holidays, not weekends… Absolutely nothing. What he has paid me up to now, I don’t think even amounts to €600 or €700. A pittance. On the child’s birthday, he might give him something. And little else”. This is how Eva sums up the father’s total failure to comply with the parenting agreement they both signed more than four years ago to regulate their future relationship.
The document established that Eva would have custody of the child, while parental authority would be shared, along with the distribution of the expenses necessary for the child’s upbringing. The father agreed to pay maintenance of €300 per month and to cover half of the child’s medical, pharmaceutical, educational and leisure expenses. At the time, the boy was three years old. The father failed to comply from day one and has barely asked to see his son “about once a year”.
Since the agreement was signed in September 2021, the father should have paid his former partner more than €15,000 in maintenance alone, not including the additional expenses he had also committed to in writing. However, Criminal Court Number 1 of Ibiza has ruled that the man will only have to pay €5,100 to the mother as compensation for the economic abandonment of his child.
“Where is the feminism we see on television?” Eva asks. She has the right to appeal the ruling, but for now she is overwhelmed by a sense of “total injustice” that prevents her from even considering the next step in a process that has brought nothing but heartache.
After confirming in 2021 that the father intended to permanently disregard the agreement, Eva began her legal battle a few months later. Her first major blow came when she went to the headquarters of the Civil Guard in Santa Eulària. “An officer told me that if I didn’t really need the money, it might be better to let it go, because it would take a tremendous emotional toll on my son”, she recalls.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.