Are you married?

Children
42

One reason could be if a bigger part of the wealth is locked in a company

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44

I agree. After all, it only applies to the benefits you accumulate during the marriage, so your existing benefits are “safe.”

Of course, in an ideal world you would both accumulate more or less the same amount of benefits, in which case splitting would be irrelevant because it would balance itself out.

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45

Hi everyone, thank you for sharing some insights.

Adding a bit to that topic with more questions. Some of you have mentioned doing a prenup/contract for non-married people. How to do such things? To give a bit of context, my partner wants to have something binding us (ideally marriage, but considering the “waste of money” due to taxes and retirement, it is on hold). I would like to know whom I should contact to do such things officially, and what is exactly the best way to do it? We do not own anything in particular, we are EU citizens and have mostly bank accounts to our names and Pillars.

Many thanks in advance!

46

I hope you want it as well otherwise maybe better don’t
 :sweat_smile:

Unfortunately I don’t know much about alternatives myself.

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47

It depends on what do you want to “bind”. If what your partner wants is to have some assurance that, if the relationship ends, the higher earner person will share parts of what they earned during the relationship with the other person: I think the easiest way to implement this would be effectively for one person gifting money to the other person while your relationship is ongoing.

You can do it either by directly gifting cash (but watch out for gift tax implications) or by taking on more expenses that you would normally do (e.g. you pay all the rent, etc.)

48

I was not against the idea, until I saw the taxes burden related to it in Switzerland. We are French, and I worked in Germany for some years and since 2 years now in Switzerland. Only in Switzerland it truly is a disadvantage to get married financially-wise, hence my question :sweat_smile:.

Thank you for your proposal. In fact, we have very similar incomes, and are sharing everything (we already have shared bank accounts). However, if I would to pass away (or her), how to make sure that she gets my money and what I have on my savings accounts etc., not for it to go to my parents/siblings


Also, in France there is something called Civil Solidarity Pact where it helps to officialize the relationship. Such a thing would help in “contractualizing” our relationship if I may say


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49

Whether the PF and/or 3a provider takes a partnership into account depends on the provider. You need to check the Vorsorgereglement to see how this is regulated. More and more pension funds are treating a partnership like a marriage, but: you have to report* the partnership and you must live at the same address!

*often with a simple form

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50

Anecdotal data point: I was going through this exercise with my pillar 2 provider (trying to register my partner) but they recently changed the process to “whatever you register and declare now does not matter - if you die, we will check who is eligible to me considered your partner according to our criteria in that moment, if any”

51

Yeah, unfortunately the inheritance is in my experience the biggest pain point of not being married (and it gets even worse with kids).

On top of what @markus654 already said: first check what portion of your estate you are even allowed to leave to your partner (mandatory minimums for other relatives) according to Swiss and French law (until you become a Swiss citizen you can use any of two), and write a will that respects those minimums. Again, careful with the inheritance tax which might be very high for a non registered partner.

On top of that you might want to check if you can stipulate a private life insurance where you can select the beneficiary - although I don’t know if it’s possible in Switzerland

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52

This is possible (example for VIAC Life Plus).

(If this is necessary at all. The inherited free assets + pension fund etc. are sufficient in many cases, but that is another topic. Everyone has to decide for themselves)

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53

my case: not married, both have an income, 1 child

I only had to fill out a form, sign it and send it to HR. My partner had to go to a notary for the signature of the form, since this is a requirement for her pension fund.

But yes, there is also written that they do not check if I am eligible (meaning if I fullfil the requirements written in the “Vorsorgereglement”), since they will do this check in case it really happens.

if you die, we will check who is eligible to me considered your partner according to our criteria in that moment, if any”

So this also means that they want find out who’s the eglible partner, without any hint?

54

What do you exactely mean that it gets even worse with kids?

    1. Pillar Pension → possible to have the non-married partner
  • AHV → you lose it
  • 3a / assets/ cash etc. → inheritance to child (if partner, you have to pay tax)

Am I missing something?

55

I am not sure exactly how the plan to figure it out (if proactively), probably just passively by waiting out for the partner to say something. But differently from your case they just refused point blank to accept the form

56

I mainly meant free assets and what I mean is that ideally most of the assets would go to my partner, instead (my situation is also not married 1 child):

  • At least half will go to the child, with 2 biggest issues I see:
    • more difficult for my partner to manage the funds (must be in child’s name, harder to find brokers, might be harder to spend on certain things)
    • when the child turns 18 then get access to a bunch of money with no ways to avoid it - and I’m concerned it might be too young to have so much money at that age
  • The other half might be left to the partner but would be heavily taxed (32% in ZH after first 50k CHF). So you have to pick between leaving the other half to the child too, throw a third of it away in taxes or something else (e.g. parents if alive)
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57

you can put partner as beneficiaries of pension. these then don’t go into your estate and so not subject to mandatory splitting.

if you still have too many other assets, you can use trusts.

58

Can you share more info? I was under the impression that trusts and similar instruments are basically not available / applicable for Swiss residents