Perspectives for an International Marital Contract
| Published date | 01 June 2001 |
| Author | Alain Verbeke |
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X0100800205 |
| Date | 01 June 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Alain Verbeke*
8 MJ 2 (2001) 189
Perspectives for an International Marital Contract
§ 1. Internationalization of Marriage
David is an ambitious young Dutch attorney working in an English law firm in
Rotterdam. For an important client, a French multinational company, he travels
frequently to Paris. The assistant of the CEO of the French company is the beautiful
Italian Antonella. The many trips to Paris and the endless meetings led to a passionate
romance and finally to a marriage between David and Antonella, celebrated in Paris.
Since Antonella received an interesting job offer at the Italian embassy in Germany, the
couple immediately moved to an apartment in Berlin. Eight months later, Antonella can
get a promotion, working at the consulate of her country in New York. David can
arrange a transfer to his firm’s office in Manhattan. So the couple moves to the Big
Apple. Five years later David is approved partner at the Brussels branch of the firm.
Now Antonella asks for a transfer to the Italian embassy in Belgium. Finally, our
friends end up in the capital of Europe.
At the beginning of a new millennium, the world really has become ‘our village’.
People travel around and move. The internationalization of the professional
environment results in an internationalization of the love and marital (property) field.
More than ever, spouses have different nationalities, or they may change nationality.
Internationalization of marital property law also follows from the fact that married
people often move away from the country where they were born and raised.1 For highly
educated people, working for banks, multinationals, or big consultant and law firms, it
is quite normal to work and live for a certain period abroad. Some of them are real
* Extra-Ordinarius Professor of Private and Comparative Law, Universities of Leuven, Tilburg and
Antwerp; Partner, Philippe & Partners, Brussels.
1. Another aspect of internationalization is the fact that spouses engage in transborder transactions.
Divergent rules regarding administration of property and liability for debts could then constitute an
impediment to commercial transactions within the Common Market (D. Martiny, ‘Is Unification of
Family Law Feasible or even Desirable?’, in A. Hartkamp et al. (eds.), Towards a European Civil
Code, (Kluwer Law International, 1998), 165).
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