Can being in debt prevent a Netherlands native from traveling to other countries?
Nathanial asked:
A friend of mine has been seeing a fellow for awhile now. She lives in the US and he in the Netherlands. He has told her that he is in debt and so the government there has laws that will prevent him from leaving the county to visit. I doubt the validity of this claim and seek a definitive answer.
A friend of mine has been seeing a fellow for awhile now. She lives in the US and he in the Netherlands. He has told her that he is in debt and so the government there has laws that will prevent him from leaving the county to visit. I doubt the validity of this claim and seek a definitive answer.
Tags: Countries, Definitive Answer, Traveling
March 31st, 2010 at 11:43 pm
That depends.
Technically - a mortgage is a debt, but as far as i know, this doesn`t prevent you from travelling abroad. (if it did, i`m in trouble
)
However, in some cases, when the debt is extreme, or it`s a tax issue - they could rule that a person is not allowed to leave until an X amount has been paid.
Or, in case of a large amount of fines (for traffic violations) it`s been known to be used - pay now, or no holiday…
So, it`s all depending on what type of debt this supposedly is.
April 1st, 2010 at 6:23 am
Well, normally the Dutch government does not prohibit its citizens from traveling to other countries.
However, there is a law that says that, if a person is in really big debts, he must be put under surveillance (schuldsanering which means ‘cleaning of debts’) and his income will be used to pay his debts and he will only get a small amount of money to live. This person is, of course, not permitted to do any big expenses, like traveling abroad, as his money should be used to pay his debts. So in that way, a person could be prevented from traveling abroad.