Propositions pour un trust suisse
New voices, including in Parliament, are now calling for the adoption of the trust as an institution of Swiss law. This would provide Swiss residents with a much-needed vehicle for estate planning and structuring. It would also improve the legal certainty and robustness of very common business transactions. Notably it would allow lawyers, notaries and other professionals to protect their clients’ assets against the risk of their own insolvency. This article sketches out a «proof of concept» for a Swiss trust. Rather than copy-pasting well-regarded foreign trust statutes, it suggests that a legislative enactment of trusts should build upon and expand the existing, but under-developed, law of fiducie (Treuhand). This would require a clear distinction between the initial disposition of property (by way of a contract, a testament or a self-declaration of the settlor) and the resulting fiduciary relationship, which binds a fiduciary to the interests of the fiducie’s beneficiaries. As is…
