Families in which only one person takes care of the children will have an official title of single-parent family that will serve to prove their situation throughout Spain, just as is already the case with that of a large family. The Government has approved a decree that was published in the BOE this Wednesday and that has been in force since this Thursday, November 12 (although it has yet to be validated by Congress), which cannot yet be requested. This is explained by labor lawyer Omar Molina García, who points out that “article 5 and the reform of the Law for the Protection of Large Families will take effect from January 1, 2027.”
This rule is Royal Decree-Law 35/2026 (can be read at this link), which came from the Council of Ministers on November 10, as explained by NoticiasTrabajo. For the decree, a single-parent family is one formed by a single parent (the father or mother) and one or more minor children of whom he or she has custody. There are also some cases in which there are two parents, such as when one has sole custody and does not have the right to receive alimony, that of the mother who is a victim of gender violence or when one of the two is going to be in prison for a year or more or admitted to a health center.
The title is regulated by article 5 of the decree, and what it says is that it will be given by the autonomous communities (or Ceuta and Melilla) where the family lives and that it will be “valid throughout the national territory, without the need for any additional procedure.” Molina remembers that it is issued “upon request and verification of the requirements”, that is, it does not arrive home alone and you have to request it in the autonomous community, which is the one that has to say how.
Now, since when can you order? The sixth final provision gives the autonomous communities six months to adapt their rules (until May 2027), but the decree says that “the date from which the exercise of the benefits and rights included in this royal decree-law may be requested is January 1, 2027.”
To keep in mind is that, as it is a royal decree-law, Congress has 30 days to validate or repeal it (as regulated by article 86 of the Constitution) and, as the Cortes are dissolved by the elections of November 29, that vote falls to the Permanent Deputation. If it were repealed, the decree would cease to be in force before the title could be requested.
To understand this, a mother with two children who meets the requirements of the decree will have to wait until January 1, 2027 to request the title of single-parent family, and from that day on she will also be able to request the title of large family. Until now, Law 40/2003, on the Protection of Large Families, only allowed doing so with two children in rare cases, such as when one of them had a disability or, for widowers, “when the other parent has died.”
The two titles are compatible, although the lawyer makes a nuance and explains that “benefits of the same kind or nature will not be accumulated, unless their regulations allow it.” In other words, the normal thing will be that two discounts cannot be added for the same thing.
With the decree already published, one might think that more aid or new permits at work are arriving right now, and that is not the case. Article 6 talks about training and employment programs with schedules compatible with those of the school and says that the income limits requested to collect benefits for the birth, care and upbringing of children “may be increased”, but it does not put any figure nor does it touch on the Workers’ Statute. For the lawyer, one thing is the measures that the decree contemplates and another is how they are later specified in each program or in each benefit, and that is why he asks to tell it “without announcing automatic increases or new permits.”
The decree also talks about the Minimum Living Income (IMV), but without changing what is charged, since Molina explains that article 6.2 guarantees that these families can request it without being discriminated against and includes “the possibility of living with other family members without losing the application of the complement.”
The decree cites it but does not modify it, and the complement is given to the unit “consisting of a single adult” with minors in their care, so it remains to be seen how it would apply to the mother who lives, for example, in her parents’ home.
The SEPE denies the subsidy for those over 52 years of age if, after exhausting unemployment benefits before completing them, they go 90 days in a row without renewing their job application, even if they have 35 years of contributions.
Social Security removes the birth benefit from a self-employed woman for raising her contribution base from 944 to 4,070 euros while she is pregnant and the Supreme Court says that there was no fraud
As for companies, the lawyer believes that the decree can serve personnel departments to guide staff and to review how being a single-parent family is credited in the benefits already provided by the company. “This rule does NOT introduce new direct obligations for HR,” emphasizes labor lawyer Omar Molina García.