Inheritance and Debts: What to Do?

Questioner

Good day, My question is about what happens if my father dies, he has quite a few debts. I have not been in contact with my father for years and occasionally hear briefly from family members about his life. He currently has a lot of debt and has been/is being evicted. Now I wonder what happens in the event of his death. We have a total of 5 children, 4 of whom are currently 18+. Is everyone first contacted personally in which we can indicate that we are waiving his inheritance? How do they get our details then? Or can we possibly have this recorded somewhere now? What happens if we all renounce our inheritance? My sister and I both have children of our own. Thank you in advance for your answer. Yours sincerely, M.

Lawyer

You can only accept or reject the inheritance after your father has died. Rejection or beneficial acceptance is done by issuing a declaration to that effect: https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Uw-Situatie/Onderwerpen/Erfenis-aanvaarden-verwerpen/Paginas/procedure.aspx If no surviving relatives are known at the time of death, the municipality will arrange the funeral/burial and make every effort to find surviving relatives. If you reject, your children will take your place. If your children are still minors, you may only reject the inheritance on their behalf with the authorization of the subdistrict court judge. If you do not receive this authorization, then a beneficiary acceptance on behalf of the minor children is mandatory. The consequence of this is that the estate must be settled/liquidated. If there are assets, these must be used to pay the debts and it turns out that there are only debts and (almost) no assets, then you would be wise to report this to the subdistrict court judge as soon as possible, so that he can quickly decide that the 'light settlement procedure' is sufficient. You can then make a description of the assets and debts and how the assets have been used to pay the debts and then the settlement is complete.