Once she‘ll get (to take care of) the kids alone, it’ll be a heavy burden on her in terms of her wage earning capacity.
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After having seen my two cousins getting financially screwed after a divorce I had the same thoughts and there was no question of my getting married without a contract. I insisted and my now wife accepted to do it. The paper sits in a drawer and we never discussed the matter again. If shit hits the fan you can be sure that you will be squeezed, a divorce is free for all.
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From your description I think you are looking at marriage the wrong way.
It is now your own situation. Marriage is explicitly about making it a shared, future situation with your partner.
Exactly! So, shouldn’t that mean 50:50 split of the total income? How do you align that with your 33/67 proposal? You seem to look at this in a way that an eventual divorce should lead to a recalculation of the income, and she should only be entitled to what she might have had without marriage in the first place. You are looking for a retrospectively applied exit, and asking for such a Plan B is understandably troubling for your partner.
Also this: How do you value her contribution? You seem to have a clear valuation on your income stream, but not on her giving up her income and the value of her raising the kids to a higher degree than yourself. So even if you want to look at this purely rational, you must also value her contribution to the marriage fairly.
Based on your rationale, I suggest not to marry before you have or want to have kids, because a divorce without kids might indeed end up unfair to the disadvantage of the higher income partner. But once kids are in play, your lives are intertwined for many years, even in divorce. And that should justify the risk of a divorce with 50:50 split of income during the marriage years, as Swiss law demands without a deviating marriage contract.
By the way:
I hope those were two separate marriages 
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What about if you aspire to some indépendance for your investment in the future?
Once married, you will have to do everything in both name and not own anything in your own.
Having a mariage contrat will allow you to borrow money on your own and do not expose your wife and kids to those risky investments (foreign rental property, creating a company for a restaurant or something else…).
Split up Statistics are on your side even if most women hate this idea.
However a marriage contract will protect you a little once you have kids.
It is best to decide this contract once the relation goes well. Once everything turn salty, you won’t recognise your loving partner.
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Very good point. What screws you financially is not typically the wealth split at the time of the divorce, but the many years of paying alimony for your kids and ex-wife. And court decisions in the past years have really not been nice to the high income partner.
Also from experience from a friend of mine:
A marriage contract must be stored with a lawyer or in a safety deposit box only you have access. Otherwise it will conveniently be lost prior to a divorce. Arranging that is of course again a very strong sign of distrust to your spouse.
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Thanks for the answers so far.
Yes, currently I‘m paying for 65% of all our joint expenses like apartment, food, internet, insurances etc. I don‘t know any couple which does this. All my colleages at the bank do a 50/50 split of joint expenses. So I think I‘m being extremely fair to her as she already profits from my higher income. Of course, if I would earn 180k and she would still earn 60k, I would cover 75% of our joint expenses.
But am I not entitled to a higher net worth even in marriage? She just went to school, had average grades in Sek E and works as a naildesigner today. You know my personal story (I shared it in a thread where I asked if I underachieved in life). It was a tough ride to get where I am today. I work hard everyday to achieve more and more. I‘m very focused and determined. I know that I‘ll eventually earn something close to 200k if I keep going like that. And it was all my hard work. Is her giving up on her 60k job to rise a family with 2 kids really equivalent to that in terms of money? She won‘t give up any career and it‘s very likely that she won‘t ever earn more than that anyway.
I‘m also ready to quantify the additional stress and work that comes from rising kids. Because it‘s not a 42h/week job. Lets say that‘s worth another 20k. So her lost income of 60k (if she really would stop working) combined with the 20k would be 80k. I‘m still earning way more than that. So it wouldn‘t be fair to split the net worth 50/50 in a divorce? She would even make a great deal with the proposed 2/3 1/3 split as she would get 50% of my 1st/2nd pillar on top of that?
Guys, we are in Switzerland not in the states. Don‘t expect magic from a marriage contract.
Legal Marriage is best described as „Risk Pooling“. Instead of covering your employment, health and wealth risk alone, you to the full extent share it. And this to the rest of your lives. Whats the point of risk pooling if the other side can step out, as the risk materializes?
If there are neither kids nor a health/economic outlook that prevents that one can live on their own feet again, you divorce MAY get you out of such risk pooling again. But this is not ensured. It only takes one accident, physical health issue, … and you pay hefty allimony. Reason beeing is that upon dissolution, the risk is assessed that one side would later on require social security and in case this risk was there, the other side will need to step up and cover for this.
In such setup - a marriage contract is nill and void. No matter what you agree re. Financial split; the judge can (and will) simply ignore it if either side had any health (incl. mental) issues, employability risks and could either no more sustain a sensible lifestile (not based on minimal standards but in contrast to the prior lifestyle you shared before) or was at risk of needing social security.
The important thing is that to a Swiss Marriage Contract, there are always three parties that need to sign it. The married couple (upon them executing it) and a few years down the line our society aka our social security system. The society will only „sign“ aka accept the contract upon divorce and only if there was no damage caused to society. If this was not the case (or deemed so by the judge), no matter what you agreed is nill and void.
Long story short: get married if you are willing to equally share all your current wealth and future income; this even if things go sour. If you are not willing to do so - just don‘t get married. Same, but a tad less severe, as well applies to the combination of kids and living together. Kids alone can cost you a bit for 25 years. But if you on top of this share a household together; you need to be willing to share your current wealth and future income.
When I read the above, I would say that you need to think about if you were truly ready for marriage yet, and I am not sure how I would attempt to fix the fallout caused by the 33/66% proposal. Even if not visible today, this could have de-railed something that will only become visible a couple of years down the line.
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You are still young and believe that lives and careers could be planned and were predictable. You never know if UBS and CS go sour, banking only paid 60k going forward and you ended up with disability and a lower income than heirs. Just because your prospect is high and heirs low - this can change over a lifetime. Same if she wins the lottery (gifts, a nail design company that goes X100, litterally lottery)… should you then still get 66% of that wealth and she only gets 33%?
Such pre-defined splits neither make sense nor are they enforceable anyways.
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My risk is a lot higher than hers if you are being honest. I mean what‘s the worst that could happen to me? We have kids, she has a new guy, wants a divorce, I get kicked out of my own house, I need to cover her living costs and those from our kids as she can‘t work and rise 2 kids alone, my income gets reduced down to a bare minimum on what I can survive and what would she be doing? Living like a queen and letting her new boyfriend sleep in my own bed. I‘m not saying that this might happen (she is far away from having a character like that). But those things happen in reality in Switzerland. I mean I see it firsthand in my job. The male high earner is always the one that loses.
How am I compensated for taking such a high risk where she has the power to basically ruin my life?
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Either know, trust and love her that you don‘t care about the residual risk? Meaning that even if things go sour (which most of the time takes two sides; even in cheating cases I belief) that you then still want her to be economically safe.
If you don‘t feel like this - don‘t get married.
CURRENT Legal Martiage is a concept that comes from another economic reality. The question is whether it was fully compatible with current understandings of equality. I think there are feminists that are quite counter it as well. The system will change I guess, but these things take time, probably generations.
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In CH you can just choose the marital regime in front of a notary, it costs around 300 CHF in Zurich. Unless you have a really complex situation you don t have to involve a lawyer. And yes the notary keeps a copy for you ^^.
Then it’s just a matter of keeping accounts in your own name to trace what belongs to each partner. Also for the real estate we bought together the ownership % of each is written in the register.
This only covers your assets, you will still need to pay alimony and child support, and share your retirement funds if things go south.
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Or the other way round : she takes care of the kids, has no income because care work is not paid, has no pension/AHV since instead of working she took care of the kids and the household.
And then you dump her for a 30y old when she is 55.
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I would still agree with Cortana, if so she will get child support and leave with some income that is not hers …
So it would be fair at some point. On the more if you sign a marriage contract you can still put a permanent order from your account to hers as a “thank” for taking care of the household.
Marriage contract is a must nowadays … and if she does not agree with both of you getting a fair protection within the deal that might be the biggest redflag ever. Means she has already tought about it…
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Not true. 1st/2nd pillar will be shared 50/50 by law. So our retirement situation at the time of divorce would be close to identical. On top of that she would get 33% of our combined savings/investments, which she wouldn‘t have in the first place (only a fraction of it in reality) if she haven‘t married me.
On top of that I would still be forced/required to provide her with additional income as she would be entitled by law to keep her living standard that she had with me.
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On thing to keep in mind is that without a contract dividends or revenues you made on the assets you owned before getting married will also be split. In addition you will have to prove source of funds on common assets bought before the wedding so that they do not get mixed with common ones.
I take the example from my family here, my cousin bought a house before marriage and part of the equity came from my grand parents but this was never put in writing and at the end when he got divorced the house was simply split although this was never a 50 50 deal. Of course his wife could not remember this top up from my grand parents and pretended it never happened although assets you inherit from your family should remain yours after divorce.
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She has no job persperctive anymore since not employable anymore because “she did not work” while she took care of kids and household for 20 years. In the mean time, she could have created her own nail studio and have a much better life than with marrying you.
Anyway a lot of coulds/maybe.
If you want to have that discussion with her, you have to be able to see stuff from her perspective. Otherwise you will hit a wall.
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Wait until you have kids and take care of them for one week all by yourself and you’ll definitely change this number upwards 
To be honest, from what you are describing and discussing here, it doesn’t sound to me like you are ready for marriage.
I earn around 3 times more than my wife does and also pay more than 75% of our joint expenses. But in the end, it’s only money. Love and relationships are important to me, money is only so important as it covers my basic needs for food and shelter. There’s no amount of money that can outweigh the love my wife gives me everyday and the love and care for our daughter. Maybe I’m all by myself with this opinion, but for me it’s either all in or nothing.
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She already has her own nail studio since 2019. She already earns more than she would as an employed person (this job is paid rather poorly, 3.5k/month). There is no room to expand the business as there are already 100 other nail studios in Basel. And she doesn’t even want that. She is happy with her one-woman business and what she earns right now. Thus she maximized her income and has literally no potential left for a higher income.
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How about this:
We go for a marriage contract with the Gütertrennung. So no splitting 50/50 in case of a divorce, everybody just gets his assets. Of course that wouldn‘t apply to the property (we‘re listed as 1/2 owners) and 1st/2nd pillar as there would still be a 50/50 split. We have a joint account for all shared expenses (house, food, kids, vacation, taxes etc.). Plus both have their individual accounts. I‘ll transfer her the amount what she lacks to earn 60k. Lets assume she earns 20k and gets 40k per year from me. We still split the joint costs like we already do now (% of total income).
If we split, everybody gets what he/she deserves?
Turns out it’s not even a question for her as she wouldn’t want that. Either we’re both all in or not, no room for discussion. But is that really fair in my situation?
Biggest question is why is that … of course if you love each other it may sound like you don’t trust each other any more and make it not that sexy …but if she absolutely does not want it … well … maybe she already has some second toughts