Narcissism and asset division: how do you prove manipulative conduct in a Dutch divorce?

Dutch property law does not recognise narcissism as a legal category, and you do not need a diagnosis to obtain a remedy. What counts in the division of matrimonial assets is conduct the law already regulates: concealing or squandering assets, withholding financial information, and obtaining a signature by exploiting the other spouse’s dependence or inexperience; the main exception to the rule of equal shares is therefore not “bad behaviour” in general, but these specific acts.

Each of those acts has its own statutory basis, remedy and standard of proof, and that is where a case is won or lost. Below we explain the starting point of equal shares, the provisions on concealment and squandering, the annulment of agreements signed under pressure, how to obtain evidence the other spouse controls, and what to do if the allegation is made against you. For the wider picture, including contact arrangements and the conduct of proceedings, see our article on narcissists and the law.

Why does the court look at conduct rather than labels?

A personality label has no legal consequence and cannot be established in a family case; conduct can. The first step is therefore to translate the allegation into facts, because those facts determine which provision applies and what you must prove.

In practice the recurring patterns fall into a small number of legal categories:

• Assets that disappear from view, are transferred to a third party or are simply not mentioned: the rules on concealment.
• Debts run up recklessly or value squandered during the marriage: the rules on squandering and early dissolution of the community.
• A refusal to produce bank statements, tax returns or company figures: the duty to inform and the procedural tools for obtaining documents.
• Pressure at the moment a prenuptial agreement or a settlement is signed: the rules on defects of consent.
• Threats, intimidation and stalking: criminal law, where a conviction has direct evidential value in the civil case.

Building your case this way also protects you. A submission built around a diagnosis invites a dispute about the diagnosis. A submission built around three unexplained transfers and a missing pension statement invites an explanation that either exists or does not.

Can you get more than half because your spouse behaved badly?

As a rule, no. Spouses married in community of property share the community equally, and a court only deviates from that in exceptional cases; bad behaviour during the marriage is not enough in itself.

Under Article 1:100 of the Dutch Civil Code (Burgerlijk Wetboek, BW), spouses have equal shares in the community when it is dissolved. Article 1:99 BW determines the moment of dissolution, which in a divorce is the day the petition is filed. Which assets fall inside the community depends on when you married. For marriages concluded on or after 1 January 2018, the default is the limited community of property (beperkte gemeenschap van goederen), in which pre-marital property, gifts and inheritances stay outside. Older marriages fall under the general community of property, unless a prenuptial agreement was made.

An unequal division because one spouse behaved badly is not available as a general remedy. The rule of equal shares can only be set aside if applying it would be unacceptable by standards of reasonableness and fairness, and courts apply that exception restrictively. Conduct during the marriage, however painful, is not enough in itself. The realistic route is therefore almost never to ask for a larger share of everything, but to challenge a specific asset, transaction or debt with the provision that fits it.

Article 3:13 BW on abuse of right, and the general rule that an agreement or statutory rule does not apply where that would be unacceptable in the circumstances, both exist and are occasionally decisive. They are, however, correction mechanisms of last resort, and a case that rests on them alone is weak. Use them to explain why a specific outcome would be unacceptable, not as a substitute for establishing what actually happened.

Which rules apply to concealment, squandering and withholding information?

Three sets of provisions do most of the real work: the sanction on concealment, early dissolution of the community in case of squandering, and the duty to inform. They are far more effective than any argument about character.

The first is the sanction on concealment. Under Article 3:194(2) BW, a co-owner who intentionally conceals, loses or hides assets belonging to the community forfeits his share in those assets to the other co-owner. This is not a correction at the margin: the entire asset goes to the other spouse. The requirement is intent, so a forgotten account is not enough, but a deliberate omission from an agreed overview of assets can be. If you married with a prenuptial agreement containing a settlement clause, Article 1:135(3) BW contains a similar sanction: a spouse who intentionally conceals an asset that should have been included must pay the other spouse its full value, not just half.

The second concerns conduct during the marriage. Under Article 1:109 BW you can ask the court to dissolve the community during the marriage if your spouse recklessly incurs debts, squanders the assets of the community, acts clearly against your management of community assets, or refuses to give you the necessary information about the community. It is not a frequently used remedy. But it exists precisely for the situation in which value is disappearing while the marriage still formally exists, and it is worth considering before the position becomes irreversible.

The third is the duty to inform. Article 1:83 BW obliges spouses to give each other, on request, information about their management of assets and about the state of their assets and debts. That duty does not end when the divorce petition is filed. It is the basis for a written request that you should always make and always keep, because a refusal to answer becomes evidence in its own right.

Can you annul an agreement you signed under pressure?

Yes, if you can prove undue influence (misbruik van omstandigheden) under Article 3:44(4) BW. The combination of circumstances at the moment of signing decides the case, not the unfairness of the content.

Prenuptial and postnuptial agreements are executed before a civil-law notary, who must inform both parties. That does not make such an agreement unassailable. Under Article 3:44(4) BW, a legal act is voidable for undue influence if one party knows or should know that the other is induced to enter into it by special circumstances, such as a state of emergency, dependence, recklessness, an abnormal mental condition or inexperience, and nevertheless promotes the conclusion of that act.

The questions that matter are concrete. How much time was there between first seeing the draft and the appointment at the notary? Was there independent advice? Was there a financial dependence, or a dependence for residence rights? Was the signature tied to a date that could not be moved, and what was said in the days before? Those facts are usually still traceable in correspondence, notary files and calendars, and you should secure them early.

The same reasoning applies to a settlement reached during the divorce, including a divorce settlement (echtscheidingsconvenant). A settlement signed in such circumstances can be challenged, but the burden of proof is on the party seeking annulment, and time works against that party. If you signed under pressure, raise it promptly, not years later when the arrangement turns out badly.

Consider this hypothetical example. A spouse who depends on the other for her residence permit receives a draft prenuptial agreement in Dutch, which she cannot read, two days before the notary appointment, and is told the wedding will be cancelled if she does not sign. Those facts, if documented, can support an appeal to undue influence. A spouse who had the draft for six weeks and consulted her own lawyer will find that much harder.

How do you build the evidence?

You must prove the facts you rely on, even if the other spouse controls the documents. The law gives you tools to obtain them: a written request based on the duty to inform, and a court order for specific documents.

Article 150 of the Dutch Code of Civil Procedure (Wetboek van Burgerlijke Rechtsvordering, Rv) puts the burden of proof on the party relying on the facts. If you claim that assets were concealed or that a signature was obtained by pressure, you have to prove it. The fact that the other spouse holds the documents does not shift that burden.

Start with the written request under the duty to inform, addressed to your spouse or their lawyer, and list the documents by name: bank statements over a defined period, mortgage and pension statements, tax returns and assessments, the annual accounts and shareholders’ register of any company, and the deeds of any property. Set a deadline. Whatever comes back, and whatever does not, is the foundation for everything that follows.

If documents are withheld, you can ask the court to order that you be given access to or copies of specific documents relating to a legal relationship to which you are a party. Since 1 January 2025, this right has been part of a modernised set of rules on evidence in the Code of Civil Procedure (now Article 194 Rv), which applies to proceedings started on or after that date. Your request has to identify the documents precisely enough; a fishing expedition will not succeed, but a targeted request supported by a concrete indication that the documents exist often will. The court can attach a penalty payment (dwangsom) to an order to produce. In the division proceedings themselves, it can also order evidence to be taken, appoint an expert or hear witnesses.

On the substance, four types of material carry the most weight:

• Financial documents: a transfer without an explanation is worth more than any description of the person who made it. A forensic accountant can trace patterns across accounts and entities that are invisible in a single statement.
• Written communication: e-mails and messages in which pressure is applied, information is refused or an instruction is given are contemporaneous and hard to reinterpret.
• Witness statements: strongest when the witnesses are independent and describe what they saw rather than what they concluded.
• Records from third parties: notary files, bank correspondence, employer records and, where they exist, police reports.

Two practical rules apply. First, document the pattern with dates and details, because a single incident rarely carries a case, while a documented sequence over time can. Second, obtain evidence lawfully. Reading your spouse’s e-mail, accessing their online banking or placing a tracking device breaches their privacy and can be a criminal offence. Evidence obtained that way tends to damage the party that produced it.

Indirect evidence is admissible. A conclusion can be built from concrete facts and circumstances, such as unexplained transfers, a standard of living that does not match the declared income, or statements that contradict documents. What is not enough is an assertion about someone’s character, however sincerely held.

Can you use material from criminal proceedings?

Yes. A final Dutch criminal judgment in which the court found a fact proven is conclusive evidence of that fact in the civil case. Without a conviction, police reports and statements can still be used as ordinary evidence.

Where the conduct crossed into criminal law, the criminal file is often the best-documented source available. Under Article 161 Rv, a final criminal judgment given after defended proceedings, in which the Dutch criminal court found that someone committed a fact, provides conclusive evidence (dwingend bewijs) of that fact, subject to evidence to the contrary. A conviction for threats, assault or stalking therefore does not have to be proven again in the family case.

Without a conviction, the material remains usable. A police report, the statements taken, and records from victim support or a shelter organisation can all be submitted as evidence that the court weighs freely. They can be persuasive, particularly if they were made at the time and describe a consistent pattern. The civil court forms its own view. It is not bound by how the public prosecutor classified the conduct or by a decision not to prosecute, and it decides independently whether what happened has consequences for the division of assets or for maintenance.

Terms such as coercive control and gaslighting describe patterns of conduct, not legal categories. They are useful to organise the facts in a submission, but they are not a shortcut: you still have to show the individual acts, their sequence and their effect.

What should you do if the allegation is made against you?

Respond with facts rather than adjectives: insist that the allegation is made specific, and give your explanation with documents. The burden of proof lies with the spouse making the allegation.

An allegation of manipulation is easy to make and difficult to answer, and it is made in both directions. Begin by insisting on specifics: which transactions, on which dates, involving which amounts. An allegation that cannot be reduced to concrete acts cannot be proven, and pointing that out is a legitimate and often decisive defence. Then provide the alternative explanation with documents: the transfer that repaid a family loan, the withdrawal that paid for an agreed expense, the account that was disclosed in an earlier overview. If the accusation concerns pressure at signing, the notary file and the correspondence usually show how much time and information the other spouse actually had.

Article 21 Rv obliges both parties to put forward the relevant facts completely and truthfully. If a party breaches that duty, the court may draw the conclusions it considers appropriate. That cuts both ways, and it is the provision to invoke where an allegation is clearly contradicted by material the other spouse had all along.

Unfounded allegations are not free. A claim that fails is dismissed. A party that has abused procedural rights can be ordered to pay the other party’s actual legal costs instead of the usual fixed amounts. A separate claim in tort under Article 6:162 BW is possible where real damage was caused. If a judgment was obtained by fraud or on the basis of forged documents, you can ask for it to be revoked (herroeping) under Article 382 Rv, within three months after the ground arose and became known to you (Article 383 Rv). Deliberately false statements can also be criminal offences. These are serious instruments, and the threshold for each is high. Abuse of procedural rights, in particular, is only accepted in exceptional cases, for example where a claim is manifestly unfounded, because access to the courts is itself a protected right.

What can you expect from the proceedings, and what should you do first?

These cases take longer than a straightforward division, because documents have to be obtained and experts or witnesses may be needed. Secure what you can lawfully access now, make a written request for information and keep a dated chronology.

How much longer the case takes depends on its complexity, on whether the court orders evidence to be taken, and on whether there is an appeal. Costs rise with each of those steps. Decide at the start which points are financially and personally worth pursuing and which are not.

The period in between can be managed. Provisional measures (voorlopige voorzieningen) during divorce proceedings can settle who uses the family home, how the children are cared for and what maintenance is paid in the meantime, and the court deals with them quickly. Where assets are at real risk of disappearing, you can ask the court for leave to levy a prejudgment attachment (conservatoir beslag), which freezes the asset while the division is decided. Neither measure requires you to label the conduct; both require a concrete factual basis.

Be realistic about the outcome. Proving that assets were concealed leads to a defined consequence for those assets. Proving that the marriage was difficult does not lead to a larger share. Setting expectations at that level from the start keeps a case proportionate and keeps you in control of it.

In practical terms:

• Secure the documents you can lawfully access: statements for all accounts you are entitled to see, recent tax returns, mortgage and pension statements, any prenuptial agreement and the correspondence around it.
• Make a written request for information under Article 1:83 BW and record the answer.
• Write a dated chronology of the relevant events, with the supporting document listed beside each entry.
• Take advice on which provision fits which fact, because that choice determines what you have to prove and what else you need to collect.

In summary

• A diagnosis of narcissism is not needed and has no legal effect; the court looks at concrete conduct.
• The rule is equal shares (Article 1:100 BW); bad behaviour during the marriage does not in itself justify a larger share.
• Intentionally concealed assets are forfeited to the other spouse (Article 3:194(2) BW) or must be compensated in full under a settlement clause (Article 1:135(3) BW).
• An agreement signed under pressure can be annulled for undue influence (Article 3:44(4) BW), but you must prove the circumstances at signing.
• You carry the burden of proof, so use the duty to inform, a court order for specific documents and, where available, a criminal judgment.

Frequently asked questions

Law & More assists clients in divorce and asset division cases where information is withheld, assets seem to have been moved, or an agreement was signed under pressure. Our family law lawyers work with forensic specialists where the financial picture requires it, and act both for parties raising these issues and for parties defending against them. More background is available in our article on narcissists and the law and in our overview of Dutch family law. Unsure where you stand? Tell us about your situation. We will let you know your options within one working day.

How Law & More can help you with this is explained on our divorce lawyer page.