Just suppose … you have signed a purchase agreement for a new house which is planned to be handed over or 'transferred' in ten months. Your intermediary tells you, the buyers of the house, a young couple, that drawing up a cohabitation contract may be advisable. He advises you to contact the notaries' office, but also says there is no hurry, since this cohabitation contract need not be signed until the legal transfer of the house, i.e. in ten months.
But what if the very worst happens and one of you dies suddenly? What then? The cohabitation contract, on the basis of which all joint property, such as the house, would go to the surviving partner if the other partner dies, has not been drawn up yet.
The consequence: the deceased partner's heirs, his or her relatives, are now entitled to half the house being transferred to them, instead of to the deceased partner. If the purchase agreement cannot be dissolved, the surviving partner will become the owner of the house together with the deceased partner's relatives. Should the relatives decide to relinquish their half, this will be considered a gift to the surviving partner, and a considerable amount of tax will have to be paid on this. The surviving partner may also buy their half from them, but this also involves a substantial amount of money.
All this could have been prevented by not delaying the cohabitation contract until the moment when the house was to be handed over. If the cohabitation contract had already been signed, the transfer claim would rest on the surviving partner, due to the “survivor's clause” in the cohabitation contract. The entire house could then be transferred to him or her, without the deceased partner's relatives being involved at all.
This might sound a bit far-fetched, but sadly these things do happen. Therefore I would advise the following: if you are buying a house which will not be handed over in the near future, do not wait until the moment of legal transfer to sign the cohabitation contract.
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K.J.M. Schretlen
Tel. 0492-370090