The tax office has recommended a woman divorce her seriously handicapped husband so she can keep childcare benefits, website nu.nl reports.

The woman has two young children but is not eligible for help with childcare because her husband is officially not working. But he is totally paralysed and lives in a nursing home so is unable to take care of his offspring.
In a letter demanding repayment of benefits which have already been paid to her, the tax office wrote: ‘if, in the future, you divorce your husband, that would be a reason to grant you benefits.’ The woman says an official recommended she get divorced in a phone call.
Christian Democrat MP Pieter Omtzigt has taken up the woman’s case and has urged the finance and social affairs ministers to intervene.