Narcissism and asset division: proving manipulative conduct in a Dutch divorce

Dutch property law does not recognise narcissism as a legal category, and no diagnosis has to be established to obtain a remedy. What matters in the division of matrimonial assets is conduct that the law already regulates: concealing assets from the community, squandering it, withholding financial information, and obtaining a signature on an agreement by exploiting the other party dependence or inexperience. Each of those has its own statutory basis, its own remedy and its own standard of proof, and it is on that basis that a case is won or lost.

Narcissism and asset division are usually discussed in the same breath, but it is the conduct rather than the label that produces a remedy. This article sets out the instruments available when a divorce or the dissolution of a registered partnership involves that kind of conduct. It covers the starting point of equal shares and how narrow the room to deviate from it is, the specific provisions on concealment and squandering, the annulment of agreements signed under pressure, how to obtain evidence that the other party controls, and what to do if the allegation is made against you. For the wider picture of how such disputes run, including contact arrangements and the conduct of proceedings, see our article on narcissists and the law.

Conduct, not labels

The first thing a lawyer will do with an allegation of narcissistic behaviour is translate it into facts. A personality label carries no legal consequence and cannot be established in a family case; conduct can. The translation is not a formality, because it determines which provision applies and therefore what has to be proved.

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 engage the rules on concealment. Debts run up recklessly or value dissipated during the marriage engage the rules on squandering. A refusal to produce bank statements, tax returns or company figures engages the duty to inform and the procedural tools for obtaining documents. Pressure applied at the moment a prenuptial agreement or a settlement is signed engages the rules on defective consent. Threats, intimidation and stalking engage criminal law, and a conviction has direct evidential value in the civil case.

Writing the case that 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.

The starting point: equal shares, and how narrow the exceptions are

Where spouses are married in community of property, they have equal shares in that community when it is dissolved. Article 1:100 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek (Dutch Civil Code) states the rule, and article 1:99 determines the moment of dissolution, which for a divorce is the day the petition is filed. Which assets fall inside the community depends on when you married: marriages entered into on or after 1 January 2018 fall by default under the limited community, in which pre-marital property, gifts and inheritances stay outside, while older marriages fall under the general community unless a prenuptial agreement was made.

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

Article 3:13 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek, on abuse of right, and the general clause that an agreement or a 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 a weak case. Use them to explain why a specific outcome would be unacceptable, not as a substitute for identifying what actually happened.

Concealment, squandering and the duty to inform

Three provisions do most of the real work, and they are far more effective than any argument about character.

The first is the sanction on concealment. Under article 3:194 paragraph 2 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek a participant in a community who deliberately conceals, makes away with or hides assets belonging to that community forfeits his share in those assets to the other participant. The consequence is not a correction at the margin: the entire asset accrues 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. Where the spouses married under a prenuptial agreement containing a set-off clause, article 1:135 paragraph 3 applies the same sanction within that settlement.

The second concerns conduct during the marriage. Article 1:109 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek allows a spouse whose rights are being prejudiced, because the other is recklessly incurring debts, dissipating the assets of the community or mismanaging it, to apply to the court for the community to be dissolved during the marriage. The following provisions regulate that procedure and its effects. It is not a frequently used remedy, but it exists precisely for the situation in which value is disappearing while the relationship is still formally intact, and it is worth considering before the position becomes irreversible.

The third is the duty to inform. Article 1:83 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek obliges spouses to give each other, on request, information about their administration and about the state of their assets and debts. That duty exists during the marriage and does not evaporate when the divorce petition is filed; it is the basis for a written request that should always be made and always be kept, because a refusal to answer it becomes evidence in its own right.

Agreements signed under pressure

Prenuptial and postnuptial agreements are executed before a civil-law notary, who has a duty to inform both parties. That does not make such an agreement unassailable. Under article 3:44 paragraph 4 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek a legal act is voidable for undue influence where one party knows or ought to know that the other is being induced to enter into it by special circumstances such as a state of emergency, dependence, thoughtlessness, an abnormal mental condition or inexperience, and nonetheless promotes the conclusion of the act.

What decides such a case is the combination of circumstances at the moment of signature rather than the unfairness of the content. The questions that matter are concrete: how much time was there between the first sight of the draft and the appointment at the notary, was there independent advice, was there a financial or residence dependence, 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 they should be secured early.

The same reasoning applies to a settlement reached during the divorce itself, including a divorce covenant. A covenant signed in circumstances of that kind can be attacked, but the burden is on the party seeking annulment, and the passage of time works against them, so a signature that was given under pressure should be addressed promptly rather than raised years later when the arrangement turns out badly.

Building the evidence

Article 150 of the Wetboek van Burgerlijke Rechtsvordering puts the burden of proof on the party relying on the facts. If you assert that assets were concealed or that a signature was obtained by pressure, you have to prove it, and the fact that the other party controls the documents does not shift that burden. What the law gives you instead are instruments for obtaining the material.

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

If documents are withheld, the civil procedure provides a right to demand inspection of specific documents relating to a legal relationship to which you are a party. Since 1 January 2025 that right forms part of a single, modernised regime for preliminary evidentiary measures in the Wetboek van Burgerlijke Rechtsvordering, which applies to proceedings begun on or after that date; proceedings started earlier continue under the previous rules. The request has to identify the documents with sufficient precision, so a fishing expedition will not succeed, but a targeted request supported by a concrete indication that the documents exist frequently will. A court can attach a penalty payment to an order to produce, and in the division proceedings themselves it can order evidence to be taken, appoint an expert, or hear witnesses.

On the substance, four categories of material carry the most weight. Financial documents come first, because a transfer that has no explanation is worth more than any characterisation 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 comes second: e-mails and messages in which pressure is applied, information is denied or an instruction is given are contemporaneous and hard to reinterpret. Witness statements come third, and they are strongest when the witnesses are independent and describe what they observed rather than what they concluded. Records from third parties come fourth: notary files, bank correspondence, employer records and, where they exist, police reports.

Two practical rules. Document the pattern, dated and specific, because an isolated incident rarely carries a case while a documented sequence over time can. And obtain evidence lawfully: reading the other party e-mail, accessing their online banking or placing a tracking device is a breach of privacy and can be a criminal offence, and material 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 a declared income, or statements that contradict documents. What is not sufficient is an assertion about someone character, however sincerely held.

Using material from criminal proceedings

Where the conduct crossed into the criminal sphere, the criminal file is often the best-documented source available. Article 161 of the Wetboek van Burgerlijke Rechtsvordering gives a final criminal judgment in which a fact has been proven conclusive evidentiary force as to that fact in civil proceedings. A conviction for threats, assault or stalking therefore does not have to be proved again in the family case.

Without a conviction the material remains usable. A report to the police, the statements taken, and records from victim support or from a safe-house organisation can all be submitted as free evidence and can be persuasive, particularly where they were made at the time and describe a consistent pattern. The civil court forms its own view: it is not bound by the way the prosecution 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 rather than legal categories. They are useful in a submission to organise the facts, but they are not a shortcut: what has to be shown remains the individual acts, their sequence and their effect.

If the allegation is made against you

An allegation of manipulation is easy to make and difficult to answer, and it is made in both directions. The response that works is the same one that works for the party making it: facts rather than adjectives.

Begin by insisting on specificity. Which transactions, on which dates, involving which amounts. An allegation that cannot be reduced to concrete acts cannot be proved, and pointing that out is a legitimate and often decisive defence, since the burden rests on the party making the assertion. Then produce the alternative explanation with documents: the transfer that repaid a family loan, the withdrawal that funded an agreed expense, the account that was disclosed in an earlier statement. Where the accusation concerns pressure at signature, the notary file and the correspondence usually show how much time and information the other party actually had.

Article 21 of the Wetboek van Burgerlijke Rechtsvordering obliges both parties to put forward the facts completely and truthfully, and the court may attach the consequences it considers appropriate to a breach of that duty. That cuts both ways, and it is the provision to invoke where an allegation is demonstrably contradicted by material the other party had all along.

Unfounded allegations are not free. A claim that fails is dismissed, and a party that has litigated unnecessarily or has misled the court can be ordered to pay costs on a heavier basis than the ordinary scale. A separate claim in tort under article 6:162 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek is possible where real damage was caused. Where a judgment was obtained by fraud or on the basis of falsified documents, revocation can be sought under articles 382 and 383 of the Wetboek van Burgerlijke Rechtsvordering, within three months of the discovery of the ground. Deliberately false statements can also amount to criminal offences. These are serious instruments, and the threshold for each of them is correspondingly high; abuse of procedural rights, in particular, is only accepted where a claim is manifestly unfounded and brought solely to harm the other party, because access to a court is itself a protected right.

What to expect from the proceedings, and what to do first

Cases of this kind take longer than a straightforward division, because documents have to be obtained, an expert may be needed and witnesses may have to be heard. How much longer depends on the complexity, on whether the court orders evidence to be taken and on whether there is an appeal. Costs rise with each of those steps, and it is worth deciding at the outset which points are financially and personally worth pursuing and which are not.

The interim period can be managed. Provisional measures 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 they are dealt with quickly. Where assets are genuinely at risk of disappearing, a conservatory attachment can be obtained with leave of the court, which freezes the asset while the division is decided. Neither measure requires the conduct to be characterised; both require a concrete factual basis.

It is also worth being realistic about the outcome of a case on narcissism and asset division. Establishing that assets were concealed leads to a defined consequence for those assets. Establishing that the marriage was difficult does not lead to a larger share. Setting expectations at that level at the start is what keeps a case proportionate and keeps the client in control of it.

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

Law & More assists clients in divorce and asset division matters where information is being withheld, assets appear 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. If you would like your situation assessed, please contact us; further background on the conduct of such disputes is set out in our article on narcissists and the law and in our overview of Dutch family law.

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