A court ruling may end the company while its financial consequences enter the household.
At the kitchen table, the company has already disappeared from the screen. The bank account is blocked, the accountant has stopped asking for missing invoices, and the founder is trying to explain why the household direct debits must still be paid on Friday. Rent, health insurance, school costs and the mortgage have no interest in the fact that the business has failed.
This is the point where an entrepreneur discovers that bankruptcy is not one event. It is a legal procedure, a commercial collapse, a record-keeping test and, sometimes, a private debt story.
CBS has put a hard number beside that reality. Of people whose businesses went bankrupt in 2019, 8.6 percent had entered registered problematic debt by 2022. Across all entrants in that comparison, the figure was 1.1 percent. Nationally, the share of households entering registered problematic debt fell to 1.5 percent in 2025, or about 115,000 households. That is better than 2024. It does not make the founder’s private exposure less real.
I read the CBS figure as a market signal, not as a verdict on every failed entrepreneur. Bankruptcy does not automatically create private debt. But it often exposes what was never properly separated, recorded or decided while the company was still trading.
The legal boundary is drawn early
The Faillissementswet begins with a plain rule. Under Article 1, a debtor who has stopped paying can be declared bankrupt by court judgment, either on the debtor’s own application or at the request of one or more creditors. That court date matters. It also arrives after a period in which the founder and the board have usually made many smaller decisions.
The legal form determines where creditors may look.
An eenmanszaak is not a separate legal person. The business and the individual are one legal and economic person. Business debts can therefore reach private assets, subject to the rules that may apply to a partner, marriage or registered partnership. The distinction between a business account and a private account may be useful for administration, but it does not create a wall against creditors.
A vof is often treated casually because it can feel like two people building one local business. The law is less casual. Under Article 18 of the Dutch Commercial Code, each partner is jointly and severally liable for the obligations of the partnership. A supplier, lender or landlord may not be interested in which partner caused the problem. The debt belongs to the firm, and the partner’s private position may become part of the recovery route.
A BV starts from another premise. Article 2:175 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek gives the BV its own legal personality. Its assets and liabilities are, in principle, separate from those of its directors and shareholders. That separation is valuable. Yet it is not a magic curtain.
The signature below the contract
Private exposure often enters through a document signed in a better year.
A bank may require a director to give a personal guarantee. A landlord may ask for a borgtocht, a contractual suretyship governed by Article 7:850 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek. A leasing company may require a co-signature. A supplier may demand security before releasing stock. These are not technical footnotes to financing. They answer a very practical question: if the company does not pay, who else promised that they would?
That question should be visible before distress begins. A founder needs one complete creditor list, not several partial lists in email folders. It should show the creditor, the amount, due date, security, guarantee, co-signature, lease obligation and the person who signed. The board should know which obligations stay within the BV and which can travel with the individual behind it.
Too often, the guarantee is remembered when the creditor calls. By then, the company may have no negotiating room and the household has no time to prepare.
The BV director also has duties that cannot be postponed by optimism. Article 2:248 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek can make directors jointly and severally liable to the bankruptcy estate when they have manifestly improperly performed their duties and that was an important cause of the bankruptcy. The article gives special weight to basic failures, including inadequate administration under Article 2:10 and failures around publication of annual accounts under Article 2:394.
This is why governance is not a boardroom word reserved for larger companies. In a small BV, governance is the dated decision that explains why trading continued, what the latest cash forecast showed, which creditors were paid, what financing was realistic and when the board accepted that the company could no longer meet its obligations.
Tax has its own clock
The most dangerous period is often not the court procedure. It is the quiet period before it, when the company still sends invoices but no longer has enough cash to meet VAT, wage tax, rent and suppliers.
For certain legal entities, Article 36 of the Invorderingswet 1990 creates a separate exposure around unpaid taxes and social-insurance premiums. The Belastingdienst requires a legally valid report of inability to pay for relevant taxes and premiums. For tax due on a return, this report must generally be made within two weeks after the payment deadline. A late or incomplete report can be invalid, with possible director liability following.
A request for payment deferral is not the same thing as reporting inability to pay. Under pressure, that distinction is easily missed. Legally, it can be decisive.
The record should show more than a low bank balance. It should contain filed tax returns, payment dates, correspondence with the Belastingdienst, cash forecasts, minutes of management decisions, an up-to-date creditor list and evidence of the company’s attempts to collect its own receivables. It should also show that household cash and company cash were kept separate.
Mixing private money and company money is often presented as loyalty to the business. Sometimes it is. But without clear records, it soon becomes impossible to see whether a shareholder loan, a private payment, an expense reimbursement or an informal withdrawal was actually what people later say it was.
A second chance begins with the old obligations
The founder at the kitchen table may still have customers, skills and a viable part of the former activity. Dutch business life rightly leaves room for a restart. But a restart does not erase a personal guarantee, a tax exposure, a partnership debt or the consequences of poor administration.
The serious question is not whether somebody deserves a second chance. Most people do. The question is whether the first business left behind a clear record of responsibility.
That is why the CBS signal deserves attention. The court may close a company. It does not automatically close the contracts, decisions and private promises made before that date. Good governance is the discipline of seeing that truth while there is still time to act with order, proof and fairness.
If business distress could reach your household, review guarantees, tax exposure and decision records with counsel before time narrows your options.
The data, sourcing, and analysis behind this article were conducted by Linda Pavan Geraedts. AI was not used to identify sources, build the factual basis, or produce the analytical judgment contained here. AI was used only as a drafting aid. The final English text was personally reviewed, edited, and approved by Linda Pavan Geraedts before publication.
References
- Hogere kans op schulden na faillissement of strafrechtelijk contact | CBS
- CBS - What counts as registered problematic debt
- CBS - Current bankruptcy flow
- Ondernemersplein - Private liability after business failure
- Belastingdienst - Tax arrears and director control during financial distress
- Ondernemersplein - Debt resolution and the limits of a restart
- Rijksoverheid - Public debt policy and access to resolution
- CBS - Instromers problematische schulden
