Partners often agree in their prenuptial agreement to share everything equally between them. However, it is also possible to agree on a division other than 50\/50. Much to the frustration of the tax authorities, a Dutch couple decided, shortly before the husband\u2019s death, to agree on a 10\/90 division in their prenuptial agreement. The husband passed away and the wife was entitled to 90% of the assets under matrimonial property law. No inheritance tax was payable on this.<\/p>\n
A man and a woman had been in a loving relationship for 33 years when, two years before the man\u2019s death, they decided to get married. Two months before the husband\u2019s death, they drew up a prenuptial agreement stipulating that the husband was entitled to 10% of the total estate and the wife to 90%. At the time of the man\u2019s death, his estate consisted of only 10% of the total assets. As the man\u2019s sole heir, the woman therefore paid inheritance tax on 10% of the assets rather than on 50%.<\/p>\n
The Tax and Customs Administration did not agree with the adjusted shares of the estate as determined by the spouses. The tax inspector took the view that this constituted a deathbed gift from the husband to the wife. The court, however, would have none of it. As early as 1959 and 1971, the Supreme Court, the highest court in the Netherlands, ruled that entering into a marital partnership does not constitute a gift. Not even if this takes place on one\u2019s deathbed.<\/p>\n
The judge also dismissed the inspector\u2019s other arguments. Even the claim of \u2018fraus legis\u2019, or abuse of rights, was unsuccessful. It is permissible to save on tax within the limits of the law.<\/p>\n
The judge would most likely have reached a different conclusion if the division of assets had depended on which spouse died first. In this case, the spouses took a risk. Even though the husband\u2019s health was considerably worse at the time the marriage contract was amended, the wife could still have died first. The husband would then have inherited 90% of his wife\u2019s estate and would have had to pay inheritance tax on it. This is the other side of the coin.<\/p>\n
Marriage is a way of transferring a large fortune to another person tax-free. If the legislator does not consider this desirable, action will have to be taken.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vaak spreken partners in hun huwelijkse voorwaarden af alles bij helfte met elkaar te zullen delen. Het is echter ook mogelijk om een andere verdeling dan 50\/50 af te spreken. Tot grote frustratie van de Belastingdienst besloot een Nederlands echtpaar kort voor het overlijden van de man een verdeling van 10\/90 overeen te komen in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}