In companies people work together intensively, especially in family run companies. In such a situation, the interests (income, capital and employment) can be enormous when parties fail to live up to each others expectations.How to deal with situations when parties are in a dead-lock and the continuity of the business is at stake? Depending on the legal form of the company and the type of conflict, there are different legal actions to settle a (legal) conflict. However, there are so many rules and different procedures for each type of legal form, that it may dazzle the reader. Moreover, these procedures may take a long time, while the parties in a family dead-lock desire an expert/arbiter/mediator proceeding expeditiously.In a sense a marriage is also a family run company. The following experiences from the area of family law are described: the processes of a divorce, the break-up announcement (the opposite of the marriage proposal), the experiment in court with the so-called regierechter in family cases, the prenuptial agreement and the plan for parenthood after a divorce. Our conclusion is that in case of a dead-lock, parties need to have a good set of rules on the settlement of disputes, to find a qualified expert/arbiter/mediator having knowledge and experience in financial/tax/pension/legal matters and familiar with dealing with emotions in a deadlock.

If a patient is not satisfied with any aspects of health care, he or she can file a complaint. In the Netherlands, as in other countries, there are several ways for handling patients’ complaints. One of the possibilities is to lodge a complaint with the medical disciplinary board. In 1997, the Individual Health Care Professions Act came into force. The main goals of this Act are to promote the quality of professional practice and to protect patients against unprofessional health care professionals.In 2008 research was undertaken into the experiences of patients (or others acting on behalf of them) with the disciplinary procedure. A sample of both complainants and practitioners against whom a complaint was lodged were interviewed about their expectations and experiences. The main conclusion is that for several reasons both parties are dissatisfied with the current procedure. This paper provides an overview of the outcome of the interviews. In addition, some concrete proposals are made regarding the improvement of the current disciplinary procedure.