Joris (50) and Babette (48) decide to divorce after 25 years of marriage. Their two children, Bas and Mark, are 23 and 21 at the time. They quickly agree on the division and record everything in a divorce covenant, drawn up by a lawyer. It states that both the house in the Netherlands and the holiday home in the Dordogne will go to Joris and that he will buy out Babette in return for an amount of €125,000.00.
Joris and Babette are advised by their lawyer that they can just arrange everything with a Dutch notary. After all, French notaries are far too expensive.
No sooner said than done. Joris and Babette turned to their notary, who neatly drew up the deed of partition, Joris paid the sum of €125,000 to Babette via the notary and the house in the Netherlands became the property of Joris. The holiday home in France is no longer mentioned by anyone.
Babette, now remarried to Daan, died suddenly of cardiac arrest at the age of 68. Because Bas and Mark were never able to accept her marriage to Daan, the relationship between Babette and her children deteriorated so much that she named Daan as her sole heir in a will and excluded Bas and Mark from her inheritance. Moreover, she has stipulated that if Daan dies, his inheritance will go to his children, anything to prevent Bas and Mark from getting any of her inheritance.
In the meantime, Joris is thoroughly enjoying his little paradise in the Dordogne and Bas and Mark also regularly stay there with their families.
The shock is therefore great when Joris dies completely unexpectedly during a stay in France.
A few weeks after the funeral, Bas and Mark have settled most things in the Netherlands and realise that they also need to settle the inheritance in France.
They therefore request me to put the property in France in their names and file a declaration for French inheritance tax. After all, they are the legal heirs of Joris.
However, when I inspect the French land register, it turns out that the house in France is not only in Joris' name, but also half in Babette's name. Bas and Mark tell me that their parents bought the holiday home together, but that they have since divorced and that it was arranged at the time that the house in the Netherlands and the holiday home would go to Joris. Joris had even paid Babette for this!
However, I explain to them that although the divorce covenant stipulated that the holiday home would go to Joris, that the Dutch notary had neatly drawn up a deed of partition and the payment of the €125,000.00 was transferred to Babette, the holiday home in France really should have been put in Joris' name by a French notary.
As a result, although Joris paid Babette, he never received full ownership of the holiday home for this. And to top it all off, I also have to inform Bas and Mark that because of Babette's death, not she, but Daan inherited their mother's handle and his cooperation is required to finally get the holiday home in their name.
When Bas and Mark tell me that they have had no contact at all since their mother's marriage to Daan and, moreover, that he died some time ago, the complications of this forgotten divorce really come to the fore.
In the end, not Joris, not Bas and Mark, not Daan but Daan's children own half of the holiday home and a long, uncertain but, above all, very costly legal process awaits Bas and Mark in France.
For Bas and Mark, it is a bitter pill that these problems could have been avoided by better advice.
Had Joris and Babette been made aware at the time of their divorce that they would also have had to make some arrangements in France and that their own notary's deed was not sufficient for this purpose, all these problems could have been avoided.
The cheap advice not to arrange it with an "expensive" French notary in particular, turned out to be expensive in retrospect.
Author: mr Monique Rombouts, notary at Van Gogh notaries & advisers
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