Claims for information for (periodic) sources of income

A creditor can under certain conditions gather information on his debtor's sources of income. Does this only apply to periodic sources of income? Not according to Koen Rutten and Youp Pletting. They believe that the debtor must also declare irregular income and wrote an article on the Amsterdam District court's judgment of 8 September 2022 for the Dutch legal journal Jurisprudentie Burgerlijk Procesrecht.

The scope of the claim for information and its application pre-litigation

The Amsterdam District court limited the claim for information in article 475g DCCP to ‘periodic sources of income’ while there is no indication for this limitation in the legislative history and previous case law. A linguistic interpretation of this article also leads to the conclusion that the information claim refers to the broader concept of ‘sources of income’. The undesirable consequence of this limitation is that the situation may arise where the scope of the claim differs for one-person businesses and legal persons compared to natural persons. This leads to inequality in legal positions. Finally, the authors discuss that the information claim under article 475g DCCP also offers possibilities in the pre-litigation phase.

Koen Rutten and Youp Pletting previously wrote an article on the Supreme Court’s judgment of 26 November 2021, in which the Supreme Court considered that the claim for information does not extend to the debtor’s equity position. That article  (in Dutch) can be read in JBPr 2022/21.

Should you have any questions following the current article (in Dutch), or should you wish to discuss your options for obtaining information about your organisation’s debtor, please feel free to contact us.