No Matter How Many Times You’ve Been At The Notary’s Office Before, Always Make Clear You Don’t Speak The Dutch Language

The lady filing this complaint had been a few years in the Netherlands when she moved in with a Dutch man (¶ 2.1). After some time, they engaged a Dutch notary’s office to write and execute a cohabitation agreement (¶ 2.2). One of the notaries executed the instrument in the presence of the complainant and her partner with the assistance of a sworn interpreter for her mother tongue who also signed the instrument. Subsequently, her partner engaged the same notary’s office to write and execute their prenuptial agreement. The notary’s office sent a draft prenuptial agreement, though only to her partner. The complainant was still taking civic integration courses in the Netherlands when she signed the prenuptial agreement at the notary’s office. The couple later married which ended in divorce. According to the complainant, it wasn’t until the divorce proceeding that she found out what the prenuptial agreement said.

In her complaint the complainant states that the notary committed two violations during execution of the prenuptial agreement (¶ 3.1). First, the notary executed the agreement without the complainant knowing in advance what it exactly said. Second, during execution the notary failed to determine whether she understood the Dutch language adequately so as to understand the prenuptial agreement’s text without the assistance of an interpreter.

Although the Board of Ethics does not find for the complainant because the statute of limitations had expired, it did make some observations. First, the complainant had visited the notary’s office previously to sign the cohabitation agreement in the presence of the notary’s coworker with the assistance of an interpreter. Although it may be assumed that this visit had familiarized the complainant with the proceeding for executing an instrument before a notary, she nevertheless decided to sign the prenuptial agreement, which was written in the Dutch language, without the assistance of an interpreter. Apart from that, the Board of Ethics finds that it’s common knowledge that signing a public instrument isn’t free of obligations but comes with legal consequences, without entering into details as to what exactly those consequences are. During the hearing the complainant added that when she signed the prenuptial agreement, she didn’t feel well. Nevertheless, that argument didn’t sway the Board of Ethics. If the complainant was implying that she wasn’t aware of the notary’s alleged negligence at the time, she must have been aware that she didn’t know what she in fact had just signed. Within three years of signing, she should have asked the notary or checked in some way what she had signed and file the pertinent complaint. Because she let time pass without doing so, the statute of limitations has run so her complaint is dismissed.

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