According to the Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper on Friday, the government has sent a notice pertaining to the Delphine Boël case to the Constitutional Court, prompting it to go against her court bid for recognition as the daughter of King Albert II. "The government has chosen to back King Albert", said Delphine Boël's lawyer. The Constitutional Court must answer two questions asked of it in November 2014 by Brussels court of first instance. The questions relate to proceedings set in motion by Delphine Boël to challenge the paternity of Jacques Boël. In this case, the Constitutional Court must decide if the paternity case is admissible in light of the extremely (overly, according to the Civil Code) late submission. It was only in 2013 that Delphine Boël took on this legal battle to challenge the paternity of Jacques Boël and then to be recognised as King Albert's daughter. She was already over the age of 22, and had already known for over a year that Jacques Boël was not her biological father.
The Civil Code and the Constitution potentially contradict each other on such claims and so the tribunal turned to the Constitutional Court to decide the matter. According to Het Laatste Nieuws, the government has encouraged the Constitutional Court to primarily apply the Civil Code, which would rule that Delphine Boël's case was petitioned out of the required deadlines and should be rejected. Boël's lawyer, Alain De Jonge, said the government should instead have declined to make its opinion known.
(Source: Belga)
