Spousal support

The Supreme Court (TS) has resolved a fairly common issue in divorces, what happens to the money that has been paid as spousal support when, some time later, a court decides to extinguish it.

In this case, after the divorce, a spousal support was established in favor of the ex-wife. It was not a “forever” support, but it also did not have a set end date, it was linked to certain family and economic circumstances family and economic circumstances (for example, the situation of the daughters and the economic independence of the beneficiary). Over time, the ex-husband understood that the situation had changed (among other things, due to the independence of one of the daughters and because the ex-wife had consolidated a work activity) and requested that the support be extinguished.

At first, they told him no, the court refused to extinguish it. However, on appeal, the Provincial Court did declare it extinguished. the pension. From there, the important conflict arose, the ex-husband, besides being calm because he no longer had to continue paying, wanted to recover what he had paid in the previous period, as if those payments had not been touched.

The TS cuts that claim saying that, while the pension was in force and there was an effective obligation to pay (even if it was being disputed in courts), what was paid cannot be treated as "undue" . For there to be "collection of the undue," it is necessary, among other things, that it was paid without obligation and by mistake, and here the payments were made fulfilling an obligation that remained enforceable until the sentence (and its notification). Therefore, even if the pension is extinguished later, there is no automatic retroactivity to request the return of all that was paid before.