Practice areas: Restructuring and Insolvency
The Dutch Supreme Court broadens the possibilities for liquidators to attack a set of legal acts by means of the Section 42 Fw actio pauliana (judgment of 20 June 2025, ECLI:NL:HR:2025:975). In this blog, we briefly describe the Section 42 actio pauliana and this (far-reaching) Supreme Court judgment.
Under section 42 of the Dutch Bankruptcy Act, the trustee in bankruptcy may, on behalf of the estate, annul a legal act performed by the debtor before the bankruptcy was declared, if that act was non-compulsatory and the debtor knew or should have known at the time that it would prejudice creditors.
In the case of multilateral or unilateral legal acts addressed to another person that were not performed for no consideration (i.e., for example, against payment), an additional requirement applies: the other party must also have known or should have known at the time that the creditors would be prejudiced by the act.
There is such knowledge of prejudice if, at the time of the legal act, the bankruptcy and a shortage therein were foreseeable with a reasonable degree of probability, both for the debtor and the counterparty (HR 22 December 2009, ECLI:NL:HR:2009:BI8493 and HR 7 April 2017,ECLI:NL:HR:2017:635).
Setting aside a legal act on the basis of (inter alia) Section 42 of the Dutch Bankruptcy Act is called the actio pauliana. The purpose of the actio pauliana is to restore the estate assets and prevent certain parties from being unjustly favoured at the expense of the joint creditors who are thereby prejudiced.
The text of the law, section 42, focuses on the single legal act, while in practice, legal acts are often also related to other legal acts. That is relevant for the rest of this blog.
In its judgment of 20 June 2025 (ECLI:NL:HR:2025:975), the Supreme Court ruled that a combination of legal acts (several related legal acts) can also fall within the scope of Section 42 (freely translated):
“3.3Section 42 of the Dutch Bankruptcy Act takes the single legal act as its starting point. However, the circumstances of the case may bring that under the scope of section 42 not only a single legal act can be assessed, but also a coherent whole of legal acts as such, i.e. considered as a whole. In this connection, the Supreme Court has previously ruled that, for the application of Section 42, legal acts may form such a coherent whole that their (adverse) consequences must be assessed in connection with each other.4 [4: See the Supreme Court Judgement of 19 December 2008, ECLI:NL:HR:2008:BG1117, paragraph 3.6.2].It follows from the above that, when applying Section 42 of the Dutch Bankruptcy Act to a connected set of legal acts, what matters is whether this connected set as such has prejudiced creditors. This is consistent with the fact that the assessment of the knowledge of prejudicing of creditors is also applied to the connected whole of legal acts. What matters is that at any moment when performing a legal act that is part of the connected whole of legal acts, the condition has been met that the debtor and, in the case of Section 42, Subsection 2 of the Dutch Bankruptcy Act, the person with or vis-à-vis whom the debtor performed the legal act, knew or should have known that this connected whole of legal acts would result in the prejudicing of creditors. In line with the foregoing, it is also consistent that the assessment of the non-obligation that Article 42 sets as a condition for annulment is also applied to the connected whole of legal acts.“
“3.3
Section 42 of the Dutch Bankruptcy Act takes the single legal act as its starting point. However, the circumstances of the case may bring that under the scope of section 42 not only a single legal act can be assessed, but also a coherent whole of legal acts as such, i.e. considered as a whole. In this connection, the Supreme Court has previously ruled that, for the application of Section 42, legal acts may form such a coherent whole that their (adverse) consequences must be assessed in connection with each other.4 [4: See the Supreme Court Judgement of 19 December 2008, ECLI:NL:HR:2008:BG1117, paragraph 3.6.2].
It follows from the above that, when applying Section 42 of the Dutch Bankruptcy Act to a connected set of legal acts, what matters is whether this connected set as such has prejudiced creditors. This is consistent with the fact that the assessment of the knowledge of prejudicing of creditors is also applied to the connected whole of legal acts. What matters is that at any moment when performing a legal act that is part of the connected whole of legal acts, the condition has been met that the debtor and, in the case of Section 42, Subsection 2 of the Dutch Bankruptcy Act, the person with or vis-à-vis whom the debtor performed the legal act, knew or should have known that this connected whole of legal acts would result in the prejudicing of creditors. In line with the foregoing, it is also consistent that the assessment of the non-obligation that Article 42 sets as a condition for annulment is also applied to the connected whole of legal acts.“
At first sight, the above does seem logical. It was already clear that Section 42 of the Dutch Bankruptcy Act can also be applied to a set of legal acts. What is relevant is that the Supreme Court applies the above-described criteria for a successful application of actio pauliana, which are written for the single legal act, to the combination of legal acts. The requirements of prejudice and knowledge of prejudice then relate to the set of legal acts as a whole. It even goes so far that the knowledge of prejudicing creditors exists if that knowledge existed at any time (so not necessarily from the beginning) when the legal acts were performed. And also the criterion for application of section 42, that the legal act was performed without obligation, is applied by the Supreme Court at the level of the whole set (the combination) of legal acts.
This seems to considerably expand the scope of the actio pauliana and thus the toolbox of the bankruptcy trustee.
Verstijlen is critical of this judgment in his note (NJ 2025/188). The mere fact that knowledge of prejudice exists in one act does not automatically mean that the entire set of legal acts is tainted. The moment at which that knowledge exists is relevant. Not every combination constitutes a set. And this judgment opens up the possibility of circumventing the restrictive Section 47 of the Dutch Bankruptcy Act, which deals with the annulment of mandatorily performed legal acts.
For bankruptcy trustees, this judgment means a broadening of the possibility to destroy (a set of) legal acts. For distressed companies and their counterparties, directors, and advisers, it mainly means: more risk, more vigilance.
Do you have any questions following the above? Feel free to get in touch. We will be happy to look into them with you.
Door het leggen van conservatoir (derden) beslag worden vermogensbestanddelen van een wederpartij per direct bevroren. Er kan geen overdracht meer plaatsvinden en in bepaalde gevallen kunnen vermogensbestanddelen zelfs elders in bewaring worden gegeven. Deze actie kan druk zetten op de wederpartij waardoor een snelle oplossing kan worden bereikt.
Beslaglegging moet wel altijd worden gevolgd door een bodem of arbitrage procedure, tenzij eerder een buitengerechtelijke oplossing wordt bereikt.
Onterecht leggen van beslag moet worden voorkomen; het kan leiden tot een schadevergoedingsactie.
Wij onderzoeken graag of dit rechtsmiddel in uw situatie tot een spoedige oplossing kan leiden.
Snel een uitspraak nodig van de rechter over een bepaalde urgente situatie? In dat geval is een kort geding een oplossing voor uw situatie. De rechter geeft een voorlopig oordeel waaraan partijen zich al dan niet op straffe van een dwangsom dienen te houden.
Wij denken graag mee over de voor uw situatie passende juridische oplossing.
Dit is in het civiele en bestuurlijke recht de procedure die (al dan niet na hoger beroep) leidt tot een definitieve beslechting van het geschil. Anders dan in een kort geding ligt de nadruk hier veel meer op een schriftelijke uitwisseling van processtukken.
Wij onderzoeken graag of dit de aangewezen procedure is voor uw geschil.
Een partij die zich beroept op de rechtsgevolgen van de door haar gestelde feiten of rechten moet deze bewijzen. Voorafgaand aan iedere gewenste procedure moet derhalve de bewijspositie worden bekeken.
Soms is het bewijs nog niet voldoende in handen van de cliënt. In dat geval is nadere actie gewenst. Te denken valt dan bijvoorbeeld aan het instellen van een (voorlopig) getuigenverhoor of het afdwingen van het verkrijgen van inzage in bepaalde documenten die zich bij de wederpartij bevinden (exhibitieplicht).
Wij zoeken graag met u naar de mogelijkheden om uw bewijsprobleem op te lossen.
Soms ontstaat er in een onderneming een intern geschil tussen aandeelhouders of tussen het bestuur en (enkele) aandeelhouders. Dit kan bijvoorbeeld gaan over de te volgen strategie van de onderneming. In dat geval kan aan de Ondernemingskamer, een speciaal daarvoor geëquipeerde afdeling van het Hof Amsterdam -- bij ons kantoor om de hoek -- een onderzoek naar de gang van zaken binnen de onderneming worden gevraagd. Zo'n onderzoek kan worden voorafgegaan door het vragen van voorlopige voorzieningen, zoals het schorsen van een bestuurder voor de duur van de procedure of het tijdelijk ontnemen van het stemrecht van een aandeelhouder.
Wij denken graag mee over de voor uw situatie passende oplossing.