KNB: digital and audiovisual resources permitted for corona patients

The Royal Dutch Association of Civil-Law Notaries (KNB) believes that civil-law notaries should be able to use digital and audiovisual resources to enable COVID-19 patients to make a will. The law allows civil-law notaries this option in exceptional circumstances, provided they clearly explain in their records why they did so.

The KNB, like the Association of Estate Planners in the Notary Profession (EPN), believes it is legally and dogmatically preferable if the law offers more possibilities for this, but the KNB does not necessarily rule this out within the existing legal possibilities. It believes that notaries fulfill an important social role in legal transactions and, in cases like these, have a duty to help people. This is especially true in an emergency situation that the Netherlands, and therefore also the notary profession, is facing. The fact that the validity of wills can be challenged retrospectively in court does not alter this, according to the KNB. The professional organization argues that it is better for notaries to be accused retrospectively of having done something than to be accused of having done nothing. Therefore, the KNB will fully support notaries against whom such legal proceedings may be filed in the future.