Reader question: Marrying my Thai girlfriend in the Netherlands

In the past, until a few years ago, you went to the municipality for a notice of marriage and if you were married to a foreigner, the municipality forwarded the file to the IND for approval and the IND to the Aliens Police, who in turn sent it to the municipality. The latter accepted this advice/conclusions (!) from IND and VP, but could ignore it and decide for himself whether or not to allow marriage.

All this was to check whether it was not a marriage of convenience or otherwise objectionable. Was already a bit outdated because a foreigner with Dutch who resides in the Netherlands has no difference in terms of right of residence as a married or unmarried couple. So it was mainly a waste of time - and therefore tax money - and sometimes a file was left gathering dust for weeks or even got lost in 1 of the 3 (see experiences on St. Foreign Partner).

Fortunately, this is no longer the case, nowadays you declare that it is not a marriage of convenience and that basically ends the matter unless the municipality itself has its doubts. Then the municipality can still contact the IND and VP.

You do not have to worry about the IND or VP if you want to get married.

Finally, and to be absolutely precise, you can't "marry before the Buddha." That is a somewhat strange translation / explanation but factually incorrect. It simply means an unofficial marriage that is not registered with the Thai authorities (municipality). So simply a wedding ceremony, there is often a monk or monks, but it does not make it a Buddhist wedding. The people around you will consider you as a married couple, even if there is nothing on official paper.

Marriage or GP is not a requirement for naturalization as a Dutch citizen, that would be too crazy for words! It is true that the standard rules are that the foreign national must give up the old nationality and must therefore demonstrably renounce the Thai nationality (no, do not just hand in the TH passport, but really distance yourself from the nationality with publication in the Thai Government Gazette) .

There are exceptions to this, for example through a marriage/GP with a Dutch person, then the old (Thai) nationality may be retained. Other grounds for exception include the fact that giving up the old nationality has financially disproportionate consequences (loss of inheritance rights, loss of land or real estate, etc.). Getting married makes it easier to keep Thai nationality next to the Dutch nationality.

Furthermore, marriage and GP are almost the same in terms of legal status in the Netherlands, but the GP is not recognized in many countries. That can be a big disadvantage of GP. The cabinet also had (has?) made it easier to dissolve a marriage (without court intervention) if a couple has no children.

Naturalization can take up to a year. Some already have a decision after a few months, others wait the whole year or even longer. Count on 6-9 months as an average processing time for the naturalization period, but know that it can take a full year.

Can you explain this in more detail? Where did it go so.gigantically wrong and so readable on several points?

Normally you have a few papers ready if you want to marry a third-country national (Thai) in NL: birth certificate and unmarried status certificate of the foreign national, sworn translations of this, legalization stamp Thai MFA and Dutch embassy. If these papers are already known to the municipality because the Thai already lives there, then at most one stumbles over the parent dam of the unmarriedness papers if they are older than 6 months. Just depends on the official / municipality.

Then the mill starts. Until quite recently, the municipality advised the IND and VP to investigate marriages of convenience. Nowadays, a signed statement from the Dutchman and the foreign national suffices, unless the municipality senses danger and still wants to investigate. Choose your wedding date and you're done. All of this from (setting the mill in motion) A to Z (being married) can 'even' also be done during a single holiday of the foreign national if he or she does not yet live in NL.

This is also indicated on the national government / municipal sites and that is how it went in practice at my marriage 3 years ago. My love had been living here for a few years when the procedures started, but fresh deeds were not necessary. So it was a piece of cake, notary and interpreter cost more time and work, but that was no hassle either. I know from the experiences of others on foreignpartner.nl, for example, that this is the norm, but there are more difficult municipalities. Often it is then purely the freshness of the Thai unmarried status that people fall over. And very rarely do you read about making a sour administrative wall that drives you insane. But those 'everything went wrong' scenarios can be useful but details of what and where it went so wrong would be nice.