The Parenting Plan (Ouderschapsplan) in the Netherlands

If you are separating in the Netherlands and have children under 18, Dutch law does not let you settle the practicalities later. In most cases a written parenting plan must be signed and filed with the court before the divorce can proceed at all. This guide covers what the plan is, who must produce one, what the law requires it to contain, what a genuinely useful plan adds, and how the rules work when a parent lives, or wants to live, abroad.

What the parenting plan is and why it exists

The ouderschapsplan is a written agreement between parents about how they will raise their children after their relationship ends. Under art. 815 Rv, a petition for divorce, legal separation or dissolution of a registered partnership must contain a parenting plan signed by both parents. Without it the petition is in principle incomplete, and the court will not simply move on.

It sits alongside art. 1:247 BW, which makes authority a shared duty and right to care for and raise the child, obliges each parent to promote the child’s bond with the other parent, and gives children whose parents exercise joint authority after divorce a right to broadly equivalent care and upbringing by both. The plan is the instrument that makes those duties concrete.

A plan approved by the court and attached to the divorce decision becomes part of that decision — the difference between an informal understanding and something a bailiff can act on.

Who has to file a parenting plan

Married parents and registered partners

Spouses petitioning for divorce or legal separation must file a plan covering their minor children together, and any minor child over whom they exercise joint authority. The same applies to a registered partnership dissolved through the court, because art. 828 Rv extends the divorce provisions, art. 815 Rv among them, to that procedure — and a registered partnership with minor children cannot be ended administratively through a notary or lawyer at all. This holds whether you file jointly or one parent petitions alone.

Unmarried parents with joint authority

Unmarried parents who exercise joint authority — whether registered in the authority register (gezagsregister) or arising automatically on acknowledgement for children born from 1 January 2023 — are also caught. Art. 1:247a BW obliges them to draw up a parenting plan of the kind described in art. 815 Rv when they end their cohabitation. There is no petition to attach it to, so nothing puts it before a judge at that moment, but the obligation is real: under art. 1:253a BW the court will normally expect a plan before settling any later dispute about how joint authority is exercised, unless the child’s interests require an immediate decision.

Where the obligation does not apply

Where one parent has sole authority, art. 815 Rv does not apply; nor does it apply to couples who separate in fact but do not petition. A plan remains strongly advisable in both situations.

The compulsory content

Art. 815 Rv sets a short minimum. The plan must record agreements on at least:

• how the parents divide the care and upbringing tasks, or how contact between the child and each parent is arranged;
• how the parents will inform and consult each other on important matters concerning the child and the child’s property;
• the costs of the child’s care and upbringing — in practice, child maintenance.

The petition must also state how the children were involved in drawing up the plan. That is a genuine requirement, not a box to tick: an assertion that a ten-year-old was consulted will not survive a judge who then speaks to the child.

What a good plan adds beyond the minimum

A plan that does only what art. 815 Rv demands will be accepted, and will then generate arguments for the next decade. The topics below are where disputes actually arise.

Two deserve emphasis. A review clause normalises change, so a parent asking to adjust the schedule is following the plan rather than attacking it. A dispute mechanism gives both parents somewhere to go before a lawyer’s office, and courts look favourably on parents who used an agreed escalation route first.

When parents cannot agree

The requirement is firm but not absolute. Art. 815 Rv allows a petitioner who reasonably cannot produce a signed plan to file other documents instead, or make provision in another way, with the court judging whether that is acceptable. In practice the petitioner explains what was attempted — correspondence, a mediation attempt, the other parent’s refusal to engage — and proposes arrangements unilaterally.

What the court does next varies. It may adjourn and send the parents to mediation, ask the Child Care and Protection Board (Raad voor de Kinderbescherming) to investigate and advise, or order a parenting assessment. Where one parent is unreachable or uncooperative, or where there has been domestic violence, it may simply decide the care arrangements, maintenance and information duties itself and grant the divorce without a plan. Declaring the petition inadmissible is possible but is a last resort.

Refusing to sign is therefore a poor tactic. It does not block the divorce indefinitely, and it puts the terms in the hands of a judge who has heard your reasons for not engaging.

Once separated, a parent with joint authority who cannot agree on a specific issue — school choice, a medical decision, the child’s registered address, a change to the schedule — can apply to the court under art. 1:253a BW. A lawyer is required. The court decides as it considers to be in the child’s best interests, and may also set or confirm a care arrangement.

Enforcing the plan

A plan confirmed in a court decision is an enforceable title. A plan existing only between the parents is a contract: binding, but you must obtain a decision before you can enforce it. Where a parent does not comply, the realistic routes are:

• Summary proceedings (kort geding) for an order to comply — the fastest route when handovers have stopped.
• A penalty payment (dwangsom) attached to the order, payable for each occasion of non-compliance.
• Suspension or adjustment of maintenance, used cautiously and rarely as a first response.
• A change to the child’s principal residence under art. 1:253a BW, where obstruction is persistent and structural.
• Involving the Child Care and Protection Board, potentially leading to a supervision order (ondertoezichtstelling) and a family supervisor tasked with restoring contact.
• Physical enforcement (lijfsdwang) or police assistance — genuinely exceptional, and applied only where nothing else has worked.

One point internationals often misjudge: Dutch courts treat maintenance and contact as separate obligations. Withholding one because the other is not performed is no defence, and it damages the withholding parent’s position. Courts also accept a substantial positive duty, drawn from art. 8 ECHR, to make contact between parent and child possible, so a parent who reports obstruction early and consistently is on strong ground.

Changing the plan later

A schedule built for a five-year-old fails a fifteen-year-old. If both parents agree, they can record the change in writing and both sign it. No court is needed, even where the original plan was confirmed by the court — though if you may later need to enforce the new terms, having them confirmed is worth the trouble. If you cannot agree, mediation is the usual next step; if that fails, either parent can apply to the court.

The threshold is modest. Under art. 1:377e BW the court may vary a contact arrangement, including one the parents made themselves, because circumstances have since changed or the earlier decision rested on incorrect or incomplete information. Art. 1:253a BW does similar work for disputes about the exercise of joint authority. A well-drafted review clause largely removes the argument about whether the threshold is met.

The position of the child

Dutch law expects children to be involved in the plan, not merely informed of it, and the sensible approach is age-appropriate: asking a seven-year-old what matters about the handover, not asking a seven-year-old to choose a parent.

Separately, the court will normally speak to the child in a kindgesprek before deciding matters that concern them. Art. 809 Rv is the statutory basis. The Rechtspraak now invites children from the age of eight to a conversation with the judge in cases about authority, residence and contact — the threshold was lowered from twelve by uniform national policy of the Rechtspraak in cases about parenthood, not by any amendment to art. 809 Rv — while in maintenance cases children are invited from sixteen.

The conversation is short, held without the parents present, and not compulsory: a child may decline, or write to the judge instead. It is also not a vote — the judge weighs what the child says alongside everything else. Parents who coach a child beforehand are usually detected, and it counts against them.

The international dimension

For expat families this is where the plan earns its keep, because the default assumption behind Dutch arrangements — that both parents stay within driving distance — often does not hold.

Relocation abroad

A parent with joint authority may not move the child abroad, or change the child’s residence in a way that affects the other parent’s rights, without that parent’s consent. If consent is refused, the moving parent must apply for substitute consent under art. 1:253a BW.

No checklist decides these cases. The Supreme Court held in HR 25 April 2008, ECLI:NL:HR:2008:BC5901 that the court must weigh all relevant circumstances, and that although the child’s interests are a first consideration they do not always outweigh the parents’ interests; HR 24 March 2017, ECLI:NL:HR:2017:487 confirmed the reasoning standards for that exercise. In practice courts examine the necessity of the move, how well it has been prepared, whether the moving parent has offered workable compensating arrangements — travel, costs, longer holiday blocks, video contact — the ties each parent and the child have to both countries, and the child’s own views. A relocation clause agreed while relations are good is worth far more than an argument about it later.

International child abduction

Taking or keeping a child abroad without the consent of the other holder of authority, or without substitute consent from the court, is wrongful removal or retention. It engages the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, to which the Netherlands and most countries expats come from are parties.

A left-behind parent can apply through the Dutch Central Authority for International Child Matters, which links the Netherlands with the other state and can pursue voluntary return or cross-border mediation, or can go to court directly. Dutch return proceedings are concentrated at the District Court of The Hague, with appeal to the Court of Appeal in The Hague. Cassation is largely excluded by art. 13 Uitvoeringswet internationale kinderontvoering, though the Supreme Court held in HR 5 July 2019, ECLI:NL:HR:2019:1085 that the exclusion does not extend to a case where the appeal court declined jurisdiction, the point of the exclusion being that the return question has been examined on the merits twice.

The Convention’s premise is prompt return to the country of habitual residence, so the courts there decide the substance. Refusal grounds exist — consent or acquiescence, a grave risk of harm, the objection of a sufficiently mature child, and the passage of more than a year combined with settlement in the new environment — but they are construed narrowly. Under Brussels II-ter, courts should decide return applications within six weeks per instance.

Jurisdiction under Brussels II-ter

Regulation (EU) 2019/1111, Brussels II-ter, has applied since 1 August 2022. It governs jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of decisions on parental responsibility between EU member states, and reinforces the 1980 Convention within the EU.

Under Article 7 of the Regulation, jurisdiction lies as a general rule with the courts of the member state where the child is habitually resident when the court is seised. Habitual residence is a factual question about where the child’s life is actually centred, not about nationality or registration. Where a child is wrongfully removed or retained, Article 9 keeps jurisdiction with the courts of the former habitual residence unless strict conditions are met, so that moving a child cannot create a friendlier forum. The Regulation also allows parties, within limits, to agree on the court, and it requires that a child capable of forming views be given a real and effective opportunity to express them.

The practical consequence: write the plan assuming a Dutch court will supervise it while the child lives here, and build in what happens if that changes. You cannot contract out of the jurisdiction rules, but you can use the plan to make your shared expectations unmistakable — that is what a court in either country will read first.