International inheritance law

Settlement of an estate with assets in the Netherlands

What about Dutch inheritance law and assets abroad?

It is common these days to have assets in different countries. For example, someone lives in the United States of America and has a home or a bank account in the Netherlands. Or someone lived in the Netherlands and had assets abroad, such as England.

The civil law notary is the preferred choice for inheritance law with assets in the Netherlands

If such a person dies, his estate will have to be settled. Several jurisdictions are then involved in the settlement of that estate and it is then often necessary (whether or not from a practical point of view) to settle according to the rules of each of those jurisdictions. The person designated as responsible for the settlement (such as an executor, administrator, personal representative, liquidator or heir) will need to be able to identify himself in those different jurisdictions as the person authorized to settle the estate. In the Netherlands, the civil-law notary is the party who can draw up a document with which that identification can take place. We call this a verklaring van erfrecht or verklaring van executele.

The Dutch basis is that one law applies to an inheritance

In such a document the notary shows what research he has done to support the conclusion that the person responsible for the settlement of the estate is also entitled to dispose of it. From a Dutch perspective, that investigation often goes beyond the scope of a jurisdiction. The starting point in the Netherlands is that only one law can apply to an estate, even if there are assets in multiple jurisdictions. This principle often does not apply in Anglo-Saxon legal systems such as in that in Great Britain, the United States of America, Australia etc.

OlenZ civil law notaries and international inheritance law

We have extensive experience with estates where the deceased lived outside the Netherlands and still had one or more assets in the Netherlands. We can support the person responsible for the settlement of such an estate and provide him with a document with which he can take up the settlement of the estate in question in the Netherlands.

Please contact us if you are in need of legal support in such estates.