Legal questions about childcare notice periods

Questioner

Ir/Madam, I have a question about the notice period for a childcare organization. I want to cancel the agreement of the after-school care for my son. The after-school care uses 2 months, but I have read on the internet that it has been decided that from 1 March 2014 all official childcare organizations must use a notice period of 1 month. This was determined by the court when the Consumers' Association and BOinK (Interest Association of Parents in Childcare) went to court. I reported this to the after-school care center but received the following response by email: The confusion about the notice period may be due to the notice period that applies to contracts with tacit renewal (the Dam Law). That is why I will go into this in more detail in my answer to you. The notice period of 2 months in childcare has been called into question by invoking the Van Dam Act. The judge has made a ruling on this: contracts in childcare must also be tested against this Act. All in all, this is now causing a lot of confusion. The Van Dam Act concerns contracts (subscriptions) with a tacit renewal and aims (rightly) to protect consumers against such renewals and thus prevent consumers from being tied to a contract for a year or longer without realising it. Article 236 of the Dutch Civil Code, Book 6 (this is what the Van Dam Act concerns) leaves nothing to be desired in terms of clarity: it concerns contracts (subscriptions) with tacit renewal. The aforementioned types of contracts may not have a term longer than 1 year. The notice period of 1 month only applies if tacit renewal has taken place. This law therefore does not apply to the type of contract that you have with ........ As a parent, you have a fixed-term contract with ..... that expires by law when the child turns 4. There is therefore no question of tacit renewal. You can also cancel this contract earlier without any problem if you wish, but thanks to the 4-year contract you are at least assured that your child will actually have a place for 4 years. In relation to this certainty, a notice period of 2 months is perfectly reasonable. The conditions of cancellation are laid down in our general terms and conditions and form part of the contract. This is the answer I got, and she indicated that it also applies to after-school care for children aged 4 to 12 years. But I have also read that the Dam Act also applies to multi-year contracts and not just tacitly. I know that many childcare centres have adjusted their contracts to 1 month. And it is legally determined. It seems as if the BSO is trying to get out of this. I would like to have my son placed in another BSO, but now he would have to wait 2 months. What are my rights since the Dam Act and the Consumers' Association state that parents are entitled to a 1-month notice period? And if I signed the contract in which a 2-month notice period is stated (while this was signed after 2014, when that law already applied), are they then in their right or does the law apply above the contract that I signed? I hope you can advise me on this. Thank you in advance.

Lawyer

In 2015, the Court of Appeal in The Hague ruled that a notice period of 2 months is in principle not unreasonable. see: http://deeplink.rechtspraak.nl/uitspraak?id=ECLI:NL:GHDHA:2015:867 Dam's Law therefore applies to contracts with tacit continuation. Unfortunately, I cannot inform you otherwise. If you have reasons that would make the two-month notice period different, I would like to hear from you.