Phara de Aguirre: “Three years ago I was at Werchter with a friend, and I started talking with Eva (Pintelon, redactrice, red.)† “So, how’s your notary?” my friend asked – she knew Eva.”
Eva Pintelon: “’Good’, I replied, to which Phara: ‘Ha, are you a notary’s wife? You don’t look like that. Quite an exciting life, isn’t it?’”
De Aguirre: “That’s how the idea has started to take a look behind the scenes. Just about everyone calls on a notary at least once in their life, but you actually have no idea what goes on in such a practice.”
When my partner and I bought a house, it confirmed what I already suspected: you pay an insane amount of money for a job that any monkey with a hat can do just as well.
by Aguirre (laughs): “When I told people what I was doing over the past year, I often got the same answer: ‘Oh, notaries. Superfluous, expensive and slow’. Well, it’s not up to me to defend them, but I do want to point out that they have to study for five years, and then do an extra year as a notary and three years of internship. And finally, they also have to pass the competitive exam.
“When Justice Minister Van Quickenborne recently announced his notarial rate reform, I heard a colleague on the radio ask: ‘Isn’t that profession passed from father to son?’ So no, that system has been a thing of the past since 2000.”
Pintelon: “And that competitive exam is extremely tough, isn’t it?”
De Aguirre: “Only the ninety best may become candidate civil-law notaries. A notary from Pelt that we follow is eager to associate with one of his employees, because he is drowning in work. But none of them succeed to date.”
Can the civil-law notaries you follow actually just talk about specific matters?
De Aguirre: “No, they have professional secrecy. And when they told stories from long ago, they often changed the names of their clients out of discretion. Four of the eleven people we follow are retired, so they can talk more freely.”
Pintelon: “One of them was once the second female civil-law notary in Antwerp. The stories you hear from such a person!”
De Aguirre: “She got tears in her eyes when she told about the time she had to draw up a will for a terminal woman who wanted to arrange custody of her daughter. That woman barely had the strength to sign, but she just managed to. The next day she died.”
Pintelon: “Our idea of the notarial profession has changed for the better. I’m sure it will be the same for viewers.”
the notaryOne, Thursday 10 March, 9.35 pm
© Smoke
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