The recent decision of the Supreme Court of May 24, 2002, specifies the requirements for family disaffection to be considered as psychological abuse
“Psychological mistreatment is an indeterminate legal concept that has to be interpreted by the Court in each specific case.”
The disinheritance consists of depriving the forced heirs (children or descendants, parents or ascendants, the widow or widower) of the minimum portion that legally corresponds to them and can only take place for one of the causes expressly provided by the Law when it has been stated in the will.
In the case of the disinheritance of the children, one of the most controversial cases in recent years is the cause of disinheritance foreseen in Article 853.2 of the Civil Code, which consists of having mistreated the father or mother by deed or seriously insulted by word.
When interpreting this cause of disinheritance, the jurisprudence has evolved from a restrictive interpretation that did not admit in any case the analogy, considering that it was not possible to enter a legal assessment of the absence or poor relationship between parents and children, to a broader interpretation in accordance with the social reality that understands the psychological mistreatment included in the concept of mistreatment of work.
Thus, the Supreme Court in its Judgment of June 28, 1993 established: “the lack of affective relationship and communication between the daughter and the father, the sentimental abandonment suffered by the latter during his last illness, the absence of interest, demonstrated by the daughter, in relation to the father’s problems, etc., etc., are circumstances and facts which, if true, correspond to the field of morality, which escape legal appreciation and evaluation, and which in the end are only subject to the Court of conscience“.
“Psychological mistreatment is an indeterminate legal concept that has to be interpreted by the Court in each specific case.”
This criterion changed as a result of the Judgment of June 3, 2. 014, in which the High Court stated that psychological mistreatment, as an action that determines an impairment or injury to the mental health of the victim, must be considered included in the expression or conceptual dynamism that contains the mistreatment of work and recognized the validity of the clause of disinheritance of the children understanding that they incurred in a repeated psychological and repeated mistreatment against their father totally incompatible with the elementary duties of respect and consideration that are derived from the legal relationship of filiation, with a conduct of contempt and family abandonment that was evidenced in the last seven years of the deceased’s life, when, already ill, he remained under the protection of his sister, without his children being interested in him or having any contact with him; This situation changed after his death, for the sole purpose of claiming his inheritance rights.
Subsequently to this judgment, the Supreme Court reiterated this doctrine in its Judgment of January 30, 2015 and in the Judgment of February 19, 2009, confirming psychological mistreatment as just cause to deprive a forced heir of his legitimate rights.
However, psychological abuse is an indeterminate legal concept that has to be interpreted by the Court in each specific case;
Currently, we must be to the recent jurisprudential doctrine established by the Supreme Court in its Judgment of May 24, 2002, which does not suppose an advance in the interpretation of the lack of family relationship as a cause of disinheritance, but it comes to specify the requirements so that the family disaffection can be conceptualized as psychological mistreatment and therefore has virtuality to be considered a cause of disinheritance, namely:
– That the lack of relationship be continuous and unjustified.
– That it is solely attributable to the disinherited.
– That it has caused a physical or psychological impairment to the testator of sufficient magnitude.
The minor jurisprudence has also pronounced in this same sense, thus the Judgment of the Provincial Court of Valencia of February 2, 2002 is clear in stating: “Emotional abandonment is an expression of free rupture of an affective or sentimental bond and consequently belongs to the world of feelings and emotions, difficult to measure, but in no way implies psychological abuse understood as conduct that, consciously by action or omission causes damage to the mental health of the testator“.
For more information, please contact our Legal Department.
