Cohabiting without a contract or a will

Cohabiting does not make someone an heir automatically. Without a marriage, without a registered partnership and without a provision in a will, a cohabitant does not inherit by operation of law. In the file the factual situation stands apart from the role under inheritance law. A shared address, a shared household, a cohabitation agreement or the absence of one: those are facts with a source. The role of heir stays empty for as long as marriage, partnership and a will do not give that role. Facts and role remain two rules.

A cohabitation agreement is not a will. It can contain arrangements about belongings or about the home during life. Those arrangements belong with the agreement, if the agreement lies in the file. They are not retyped into a share of the estate. A clause that does say something about the estate remains a clause from that document, not a statutory division. The statutory division of art. 4:13 BW requires a spouse or a registered partner and one or more children. A cohabitant without that status does not fall under it.

For inheritance tax the Dutch Tax Administration (Belastingdienst) uses concepts of partner of its own. Those concepts can diverge from the question whether someone is an heir. The file refers to that and fills in no extra figures. The cohabitant's tax class remains a field that is set only if the conditions of the Dutch Tax Administration (Belastingdienst) have been applied to this person in the source the file keeps. The software does not copy the conclusion under inheritance law into that field, and it does not copy a fiscal impression back into the role of heir.

On the list of persons involved the cohabitant can simply stand. The tie is cohabitant, not spouse, for as long as there is no marriage or registered partnership. Correspondence with that person about the home or the household contents remains possible. An invitation to the portal makes no one an heir. A key to the house does not either. Only a document that carries the role fills in the role. If that document is missing, the cohabitant remains visible as a person involved without a share of the estate.

Ervazo orders the facts about cohabiting and the documents that are or are not there. It does not calculate by way of advice, draws up no deed and files no tax return and makes no payment. The tax class remains a reference to the Dutch Tax Administration (Belastingdienst), without a figure invented by the software. The civil-law notary, the court or the Dutch Tax Administration (Belastingdienst) decides the specific case. Whether someone is a partner for tax purposes remains a question for the Dutch Tax Administration (Belastingdienst), and not a tick by analogy with marriage.