Common tasks

Recipes for the questions Belgian legal software asks most often. Every example imports from the package root unless it says otherwise. See entry points to import less.

Which function?

You have	You want	Use
A municipality (REFNIS code)	Its cantons	getCantonsForMunicipality
A municipality	Its justices of the peace, with their cantons	findJusticesOfThePeace
A municipality and a court type	The courts of that type with jurisdiction	findCourtsWithJurisdiction
A postal code and a court type	Both of the above, per municipality	findCourtsForPostalCode
A postal code	Its municipalities	getMunicipalitiesForPostalCode
Coordinates	The canton, or the arrondissement	findCantonsAt, findArrondissementsAt
A canton	Its justice of the peace	getJusticeOfThePeace
A canton	Every court whose area holds it	getCourtsForCanton
A court	Its divisions or seats	getDivisions
A type, arrondissement or area	The courts that match	findCourts
A court	Its name in a language	formatCourtName
A court, prison or house of justice	A phone number, e-mail or bank account	getContact
A day	The legal or commercial interest rate	getInterestRate
The last day of a deadline	The day it moves to	nextWorkingDay

findJusticesOfThePeace, findCourtsWithJurisdiction and findCourtsForPostalCode combine the territory and the courts, so they're only in the package root.

Which justice of the peace for an address?

The justice of the peace is the court of a canton, and a canton is a set of municipalities or parts of them. Start from the municipality's REFNIS code:

import { findJusticesOfThePeace } from 'belgica'

const [result] = findJusticesOfThePeace('44088') // Merelbeke-Melle
result.court.id // 'justice-of-the-peace-merelbeke-melle'
result.partial // false: the canton covers the whole municipality

For a city split over several cantons you get one entry per canton, each with partial: true, and the street decides:

findJusticesOfThePeace('44021').map((r) => r.canton.id) // ['gent-1', 'gent-2', 'gent-3', 'gent-4', 'gent-5']

There are two ways to settle it:

• With the address's coordinates, ask the canton boundaries. They're in their own entry point, because the geometry is large:

  import { findCantonsAt } from 'belgica/canton-boundaries'
  import { getJusticeOfThePeace } from 'belgica/courts'
  
  const [canton] = findCantonsAt(3.7268, 51.053) // longitude, latitude: gent-1
  getJusticeOfThePeace(canton.id).address

  Geocoding the address is up to you: the regions' address registers and the federal BeST address data on geo.be do that.

• Without coordinates, show the candidates with each canton's territory, the law's description of its part of the city, and let a person choose.

The boundaries are the National Geographic Institute's reading of the law. For an address close to a boundary line, the territory text decides.

Which court of a type for a municipality?

Every court other than a justice of the peace lists the cantons its area holds (cantons), as the law sets them. findCourtsWithJurisdiction finds the courts of a type whose area holds one of the municipality's cantons:

import { findCourtsWithJurisdiction, getDivisions } from 'belgica'

findCourtsWithJurisdiction('23088', 'police-court').map((c) => c.id) // ['police-court-vilvoorde']
findCourtsWithJurisdiction('21004', 'labour-court').map((c) => c.id)
// ['labour-court-brussel-fr', 'labour-court-brussel-nl']: one per language in Brussels

The result is the court as a whole. Which division hears a case is set by royal decree and isn't in the data yet (#58), so list the divisions and let the user choose:

const [court] = findCourtsWithJurisdiction('44021', 'enterprise-court')
getDivisions(court.id).map((d) => d.id) // ['enterprise-court-gent-brugge', …, 'enterprise-court-gent-veurne']

The court types are justice-of-the-peace, police-court, court-of-first-instance, enterprise-court, labour-court, court-of-appeal, labour-court-of-appeal and court-of-assize.

From a postal code

Addresses come with a postal code, not a REFNIS code. findCourtsForPostalCode goes from the postal code to its municipality, and from there to the justices of the peace and the courts of the type you ask for:

import { findCourtsForPostalCode } from 'belgica'

const [gent] = findCourtsForPostalCode('9050', 'labour-court')
gent.municipality.name.nl // 'Gent'
gent.courts.map((c) => c.id) // ['labour-court-gent']
gent.justicesOfThePeace.map((r) => r.canton.id) // ['gent-1', …, 'gent-5']: the street decides

It answers per municipality. Three postal codes, 1040, 1050 and 1804, belong to two municipalities, and you get both rather than a guess:

findCourtsForPostalCode('1040', 'police-court').map((r) => r.municipality.name.nl) // ['Brussel', 'Etterbeek']

Every court for a canton

getCourtsForCanton gives the justice of the peace of a canton and, of every other type, the court whose area holds it:

import { getCourtsForCanton } from 'belgica'

getCourtsForCanton('gent-1').map((c) => c.id)
// ['court-of-appeal-gent', 'court-of-assize-oost-vlaanderen', 'court-of-first-instance-oost-vlaanderen',
//  'enterprise-court-gent', 'justice-of-the-peace-gent-1', 'labour-court-gent',
//  'labour-court-of-appeal-gent', 'police-court-oost-vlaanderen']

Show a court's name and contacts

Use the name as the court publishes it wherever it has legal weight, in a summons or a letter. formatCourtName picks the language, and falls back to one the court publishes in:

import { formatCourtName, getCourt } from 'belgica'

const court = getCourt('justice-of-the-peace-gent-1')
formatCourtName(court, 'nl') // 'Vredegerecht Gent 1'
formatCourtName(court, 'fr') // 'Vredegerecht Gent 1': the court publishes in Dutch only
formatCourtName(court, 'fr', { style: 'canton' }) // 'Justice de paix 1er canton Gand': a display label

Larger courts have a registry per matter, each with its own contacts. getContact takes the registry's label as the court publishes it:

import { formatIban, formatPhoneNumber, getContact } from 'belgica'

getContact(getCourt('court-of-appeal-liege'), 'email', 'Greffe pénal') // 'liege.ca.greffepenal@just.fgov.be'
formatPhoneNumber('+3253820701') // '053 82 07 01'
formatIban('BE73679200844560') // 'BE73 6792 0084 4560'

List a court's contacts to see which labels it uses. They're free text, in the language of the court's page.

A list of courts for a form

findCourts filters by type, kind, arrondissement and judicial area. kind: 'court' leaves out divisions and seats:

import { findCourts } from 'belgica'

findCourts({ type: 'court-of-appeal' }) // the five courts of appeal
findCourts({ type: 'police-court', kind: 'court', judicialArea: 'gent' })

A browser form that needs only some courts can load much less than belgica/courts: see only the courts you need.

Interest on a day

import { getInterestRate } from 'belgica'

getInterestRate('2024-06-15', 'legal') // { rate: 5.75, period: { from: '2024-01-01', to: '2024-12-31' } }
getInterestRate('2014-06-15', 'commercial') // { rate: 7.5, … }: a contract from before 16 March 2013
getInterestRate('2014-06-15', 'commercial', { contractAfter20130316: true }) // { rate: 8.5, … }

A claim that runs over several periods needs the rate of each. The period in the result says where the current one ends. null means no rate is on file for that day: warn rather than use 0 %. See interest rates.

The last day of a deadline

When the last day of a procedural deadline is a Saturday, a Sunday or a legal public holiday, it moves to the next working day (art. 53 Ger.W. / C. jud.):

import { isJudicialHoliday, nextWorkingDay } from 'belgica/calendar'

nextWorkingDay('2026-04-04') // '2026-04-07': Saturday, Sunday, then Easter Monday
isJudicialHoliday('2026-08-14') // true: 1 July to 31 August

When a deadline starts and how long it runs depend on the procedure, and are left to you. See public holidays.

Reach a prison or a house of justice

import { getContact, getHouseOfJustice, getPrison } from 'belgica'

getPrison('gevangenis-gent').name.fr // 'Prison de Gand'
getHouseOfJustice('justitiehuis-gent').address
getContact(getHouseOfJustice('maison-justice-arlon'), 'email', "service d'accueil des victimes")

Put the cantons on a map

The boundaries are GeoJSON MultiPolygons in WGS 84, ready for any map library or GIS:

import { cantonBoundaries } from 'belgica/canton-boundaries'

const collection = {
    type: 'FeatureCollection',
    // The array holds every version: keep the ones that still apply
    features: cantonBoundaries
        .filter((b) => b.validTo === undefined)
        .map((b) => ({
            type: 'Feature',
            id: b.canton,
            properties: {},
            geometry: b.geometry,
        })),
}

The file is 23 MB of JSON. In a browser, load belgica/data/canton-boundaries.json when the map opens rather than in the main bundle. See canton boundaries.