Prenuptial agreements

Under Netherlands Antilles law, spouses have an automatic and general ‘community of property’. This means that from the day of the marriage, the assets and liabilities of both spouses become a single whole. This includes not only possessions acquired during the marriage (with the exception of what has been inherited during the marriage) but also those which the spouses already had before the marriage.

It is possible to avoid a statutory community of property by entering into a marriage contract. This kind of contract is executed before a notary. There are many kinds of marriage contracts, and a notary has an important advisory task in this respect.

After the marriage contract has been drawn up, the notary arranges for it to be entered in the register of matrimonial property kept by the court. As it is public, anyone may inspect its contents.

Prenuptial agreements executed before the matrimony will cost:

If this kind of agreements is made during the marriage the costs will be higher, because the approval of the court of first instance must be obtained and in some cases the community of goods must be partitioned.