Monday, February 18, 2013

Attesta de Vita, Anyone There?

For those who do not know, Attesta de Vita is a life certificate. Not a certificate to have a life, but a document to prove that you are still living.

As my hub has already passed "Go" and can now collect his $money$ as in Monopoly, he is required by the Dutch social security and retirement/pension funds to prove he is still alive. He diligently takes the Attesta de Vita forms to our Notary for signing and stamping.

Recently he was surprised when one pension fund did not pay up. When he finally made connection with the pension fund administration, he was told that his Attesta de Vita had not been received. So that was that.

But that was not that.

Here is what happened:
Around Christmas 2012 my hub received a reminder that his Attesta de Vita for that particular pension fund was to be returned by January 2013. The letter to him had been mailed six weeks before by freight snail mail.

He finally caught up with our Notary at the end of the year and then deposited the signed, stamped, and sealed Attesta de Vita in the mailbox at our post office on January 1, 2013.

Five weeks later my hub checked our bank account and noticed the omission. Then he started his endeavor to find out why.

What bothers me the most is that without checking (if my hub was still living) by mail, email, phone, or smoke signals, they just cut off the funds.

How could we resolve this? Well, my hub filled out another Attesta de Vita, visited our Notary for the proper certification, and this time emailed the document according to the directions of the pension funds representative that my hub "chatted with" on the phone.

We are still waiting for rectification.

And why can't this pension funds request the Attesta de Vita in August like all the rest?

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