A recent ruling by the Supreme Court has rejected that a single mother can enjoy the leave for birth and care of the minor that would have corresponded to another parent.
The high court has indicated that it does not see legal coverage to endorse the double permit for single-parent families, stressing that its function is "the application and interpretation of the norm, but not the creation of the right."
Chamber IV has handed down a ruling in the appeal filed by the Public Prosecutor in relation to the request of a single-parent parent who requested a benefit for birth and additional child care to the one she had already enjoyed.
The Chamber dismissed the claim to hear that the configuration of the Social Security Benefit Regime corresponded exclusively to the legislator, who recently rejected in the Senate an amendment that sought to introduce a modification in this regard into the Law. In addition, the sentence reasons that it is the legislator who is responsible for the different interests at stake - joint responsibility in the care of the child, the interest of the minor, the interest of the parent - and decide the most convenient solution in this regard.
The case has reached the Supreme Court after the woman filed a lawsuit against the decision of the National Social Security Institute not to allow her to also enjoy the benefit for birth and child care that would correspond to the other parent.
The Social Court Number 5 of Bilbao dismissed that claim and, after filing an appeal, the case passed into the hands of the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country, which corrected the initial decision and agreed with the woman. Before such resolution, the Prosecutor's Office went to the Supreme Court to request that the doctrine be unified.
Other perspectives
The conflict that the high court is now resolving comes from a trickle of court rulings that established some single mothers to extend the maternity benefit from 16 weeks to 26 or 32 weeks to avoid discrimination of their children compared to those with two parents at home. .
