If you hold assets in or around Davos, the sensible move is to start a modular legacy plan now: appoint an executor, review your will or inheritance contract, and book a joint meeting with a notary and your wealth manager within the next few weeks.
That’s the direct answer. Here’s the short agenda to act on it:
- Appoint an executor (Willensvollstrecker) so no single heir can freeze estate decisions later.
- Review your will or inheritance contract, especially if it was drafted before January 2023, when the rules on compulsory portions changed.
- Decide whether philanthropy belongs in the plan, and if so, which vehicle fits your goals.
For your first meeting, bring one simple question: “Given our family structure and any cross-border ties, what’s freely disposable now, and what isn’t?” That single question tends to surface most of the legal and tax work still ahead of you.
Key Takeaways
Legacy planning in Davos works best when families pair updated legal documents with early professional coordination, clear governance, and, where relevant, a well-matched philanthropic vehicle.
Why legacy planning in Davos matters, and when to start
Legacy planning is really about keeping control of decisions that, left unattended, get made for you by cantonal law, family disputes, or plain bad timing. For families with business assets or cross-border ties, an early start protects value, and delay is the single most common source of regret.
The urgency is not abstract. A 2025 national survey of Swiss family businesses found only around 11% had completed a formal succession process, while roughly 47% hadn’t even started structural planning. If you own a business, you are statistically more likely to be unprepared than prepared.
Timing depends heavily on your exit route. According to practical guidance for Swiss business owners, preparation horizons vary sharply:
- Family buyout: often a decade or more of groundwork.
- Management buyout: typically around seven years.
- External sale: usually closer to four years.
Pro Tip: Set a review trigger, not just a review date. Marriage, a new child, selling a business, or relocating across a canton or border should each prompt an immediate look at your will, not a wait for your next annual check-in.
Cantonal tax variability adds another layer. Switzerland has no federal inheritance tax; it’s set entirely by the cantons, which means your domicile and your heirs’ domicile both affect what gets taxed and how much. That’s a planning lever, not just an administrative detail, and it’s worth weighing before you finalise anything.
Which legal instruments matter most: wills, inheritance contracts and executors
Start with three documents: a will, an inheritance contract (Erbvertrag) if you need binding commitments among several parties, and a formal executor appointment. If you run a business, add a shareholders’ agreement to the list.
The rules changed meaningfully on 1 January 2023. Swiss inheritance law widened the freely disposable portion of an estate, reducing compulsory portions for children and spouses. That gives you more room to direct assets toward a partner, a stepchild, a business successor, or a charitable cause, but only if your existing will actually reflects the new rules. A document drafted in 2019 under the old compulsory-portion framework may no longer say what you think it says.
A will and an inheritance contract solve different problems. A will is a personal, revocable statement of your wishes. An inheritance contract is binding on all signatories and can’t be changed unilaterally, which makes it useful when you need certainty, for instance locking in a business succession arrangement with a co-owner or adult child.
- Draft or update your will with a notary, referencing the post-2023 disposable portion.
- Use an inheritance contract where multiple parties need binding certainty, not just personal intent.
- Appoint an executor explicitly. Without one, every administrative decision can require unanimous heir agreement, and a single reluctant heir can stall the whole estate.
- Pair a will or contract with a governance charter if a family business is involved.
Practitioners increasingly recommend a layered approach for complex or cross-border estates: combining wills or inheritance contracts with governance charters and shareholder agreements reduces ambiguity and cuts the odds of a legal dispute later.
Pro Tip: If your will predates January 2023, don’t assume it’s still valid in spirit. Book a 30-minute review with a notary specifically to check whether the new disposable-portion rules change what you intended.
Because inheritance and gift tax sit with the cantons, a family split between Davos and, say, Zurich or Geneva may face materially different rates on the same estate. That’s reason enough to settle domicile questions early rather than leaving them for heirs to untangle.
Building a philanthropic legacy that fits your family
For most Davos families, a donor-advised fund is the more practical starting point; a dedicated foundation only makes sense once giving becomes substantial and permanent enough to justify running your own governance structure.
Structured giving in Switzerland generally falls into three tiers. Direct gifts are simplest but offer no ongoing structure. Donor-advised funds held under an umbrella foundation give you most of the benefits of a private foundation, control over grant recommendations, a defined charitable purpose, professional administration, without the overhead of running one. A dedicated foundation gives you full control and permanence, but it comes with a governing council, audits, and ongoing reporting obligations that many families underestimate.
One practical option worth knowing about: a testamentary philanthropic fund. The Swiss Philanthropy Foundation lets you define a fund or allocate a bequest in your will, and the foundation activates and administers it once the will is executed, handling reporting so your heirs aren’t left managing a charity alongside their grief.
There’s a tax angle too. Because Switzerland has no federal inheritance tax, and cantons generally exempt bequests to recognised charitable foundations by domiciled testators, philanthropic giving can be one of the more tax-efficient parts of a legacy plan, not just the most personally meaningful.
- Direct gift: simplest, no structure, best for one-off or modest giving.
- Donor-advised fund: lower administration, retained input on grants, ideal for most affluent families.
- Dedicated foundation: full control and permanence, but with audit and governance duties.
A dedicated foundation gives permanence and control, but it comes with a council, audits, and reporting obligations that many advisers say only make sense for substantial, ongoing giving.
Pro Tip: If philanthropy and business succession both feature in your plan, coordinate them in the same conversation. Aligning charitable intent with how shares or company assets pass down avoids the awkward situation where a foundation and an heir end up disputing the same asset.
Planning succession for a family business
If you own a business, decide the transfer route before you decide anything else: a family transfer, a management buyout, or an external sale. Each demands a different valuation approach, a different timeline, and different governance work.
Whichever route you lean toward, the groundwork is largely the same. A practical guide for Swiss company succession recommends this sequence:
- Commission an independent company valuation early, before emotions or informal expectations distort the number.
- Decide the transfer route as soon as realistically possible, since it shapes every later decision.
- Draft a cohesive legal framework covering the will, inheritance contract, and shareholders’ agreement together.
- Appoint an executor with explicit authority over business assets, not just personal ones.
- Engage the family early. Silence breeds assumptions, and assumptions cause disputes.
A governance charter is worth writing even if you think your family gets on fine. It typically sets out decision rights, dispute resolution steps, and expectations for family members who aren’t active in the business but hold shares. Pair it with a shareholders’ agreement for legal enforceability.
- Family buyout: preparation often requires many years.
- Management buyout: typically requires multiple years.
- External sale: usually requires a few years.
The biggest gap isn’t legal, it’s human. The same 2025 family business survey found a small minority of firms have a formal programme to integrate the next generation, despite generational turnover accelerating across Swiss family businesses.
Pro Tip: Write the governance charter before you need it, not during a crisis. A charter drafted while relationships are calm is far more likely to be followed than one drafted mid-dispute.
Who to bring to the table, and what to ask them
Start with four people: a notary, a tax or wealth lawyer, your wealth manager, and, if a business is involved, a corporate adviser or professional executor. Bring them together early rather than consulting each in isolation.
Each plays a distinct role, and each deserves a specific question at your first meeting.
- Notary: “Does my current will or inheritance contract reflect the post-2023 disposable portion rules?”
- Tax or wealth lawyer: “Given our domicile and any cross-border assets, what cantonal or international exposure should we plan around now?”
- Wealth manager: “How does our investment structure need to change to support the succession or philanthropic plan we’re building?”
- Corporate adviser or executor: “What governance and valuation work needs to happen before we can commit to a transfer route?”
Watch for a couple of warning signs. An adviser who has never handled a cross-border estate, or who resists coordinating with your other advisers, is a red flag worth taking seriously. Legacy planning touches law, tax, and investment strategy simultaneously; advisers who work in silos tend to produce plans with gaps at the seams.
Marmot Finance typically coordinates this shortlist directly, pulling together notary and tax input alongside the investment side, so families aren’t stitching together three separate conversations themselves. For that first meeting, bring your most recent will, a summary of major assets by jurisdiction, and a rough family tree noting any second marriages, stepchildren, or non-Swiss heirs, since these usually change the legal picture the most.
Protecting legacy assets from disputes and claims
Disputes usually start with ambiguity, not malice. The clearest way to reduce risk is to remove interpretation from the equation wherever you can.
An inheritance contract, being binding on all signatories, closes off the kind of “but I thought you meant…” disputes that a simple will can invite. Combining it with a governance charter for business assets adds a second layer of protection, particularly for disagreements between active and passive family shareholders.
Creditor protection deserves specific attention if you or a family member runs a business with personal liability exposure. Structuring business ownership through appropriate legal entities, and keeping personal and business assets clearly separated on paper, limits how far a creditor claim against one part of the family can reach into another. This is a conversation for your tax lawyer, not something to leave to a will alone.
Marriage contracts and matrimonial property agreements also matter more than people expect. Swiss matrimonial property regimes interact directly with inheritance shares, so a poorly matched marriage contract can unintentionally shrink what you intended to leave a spouse or child, or expand a stepchild’s claim beyond what you’d planned.
Finally, appoint an executor explicitly. Without one, unanimous heir agreement is required for administrative decisions, which gives a single disgruntled heir real leverage to delay or block the estate. A named executor with clear authority closes that gap before it opens.
Including digital assets in your legacy plan
Digital assets rarely get the same attention as property or securities, yet they can be harder to locate and access after death than a bank account.
Start with an inventory: cryptocurrency wallets, brokerage and banking logins, domain names, digital collections, cloud storage, and social media accounts. Without documented access, an executor may face genuine technical barriers, not just legal ones, especially with cryptocurrency held in self-custody wallets, where a lost private key can mean the asset is gone permanently, with no bank or notary able to recover it.
Practical steps worth taking now:
- List digital assets separately from your main asset inventory, updated at least annually.
- Store access credentials with a password manager and share the master access method with your executor, not the passwords themselves, through a secure, documented process.
- Specify digital assets explicitly in your will rather than assuming they fall under general “personal property” language, which can create ambiguity over intent.
Cryptocurrency holdings deserve a specific mention to your tax lawyer, since valuation and cantonal tax treatment for digital assets can differ from traditional securities. If you hold meaningful crypto positions, this is worth raising directly rather than assuming your existing estate documents already cover it.
Local traditions and preferences shaping legacy decisions in Davos
Davos sits within a canton where family businesses, tourism-linked enterprises, and multi-generational property holdings are common, and that shapes how families here tend to think about legacy.
Property is often the emotional centre of a Davos estate plan. Many families hold chalets or hospitality-linked assets that have passed through generations, and decisions about whether to keep, sell, or divide such property frequently carry more weight than the purely financial value would suggest. That makes early, honest family conversation about property intentions particularly valuable here, more so than in purely urban estates dominated by liquid assets.
Community and philanthropic tradition also run deep in mountain cantons, where local giving, supporting schools, mountain infrastructure, or cultural institutions, often sits comfortably alongside broader Swiss or international causes. A donor-advised fund or testamentary philanthropic fund can accommodate both local and international giving within one structure, which suits families with roots in Davos but interests and assets that stretch well beyond it.
Multilingual and cross-border family ties are common too, given Davos’s international profile. That reinforces a point raised earlier: get domicile and cross-border tax questions settled early, because assumptions about “how things are usually done” in one jurisdiction rarely translate cleanly to another.
How new federal inheritance rules change the planning picture
The most consequential recent change is the reform that took effect on 1 January 2023, widening the freely disposable portion of an estate and reducing compulsory portions for children and, in some structures, spouses.
Practically, this means testators now have more freedom to direct assets toward a business successor who isn’t a direct heir, a cohabiting partner with no automatic inheritance rights, a stepchild, or a charitable cause, without running into the compulsory portion limits that constrained pre-2023 wills.
The catch is that this freedom only helps you if your documents reflect it. A will drafted under the old rules may still work, but it won’t take advantage of the expanded discretion unless it’s actively revised. This is precisely the kind of reform that rewards a proactive review rather than a “no news is good news” assumption.
It’s also worth remembering what didn’t change: Switzerland still has no federal inheritance tax, and taxation remains a cantonal matter. The 2023 reform affects who can inherit and how much discretion you have, not what tax applies once they do. Those are two separate conversations, and both belong in your will review.
Managing risk: creditors, disputes and the unexpected
Good legacy planning assumes something will go wrong eventually, a business downturn, a lawsuit, a sudden death without updated documents, and builds in protection against each.
Creditor exposure is the risk families most often overlook until it’s relevant. If a family member’s business carries personal liability, structuring ownership through the right legal entity and keeping business and personal assets clearly separated limits how far a creditor’s claim can reach. This deserves the same seriousness as any inheritance question, and the same professional input from a tax lawyer, not a general assumption that “it will probably be fine.”
Unforeseen events, incapacity, sudden death, a contested divorce, are the second major risk category. A durable power of attorney, kept separate from your will, ensures someone you trust can manage your affairs if you become incapacitated, without needing a court-appointed guardian. This is distinct from an executor’s role, which only activates after death.
Finally, consider what happens if a single heir simply refuses to cooperate. Without an executor, unanimous agreement is required for administrative decisions, meaning one uncooperative heir can freeze the entire estate indefinitely. Appointing an executor with clear authority is, in practical terms, the single most effective piece of risk management in this whole process, and one of the cheapest to put in place.
Cross-border considerations for Davos residents with international ties
If any part of your estate touches another country, foreign property, foreign citizenship, heirs living abroad, choice-of-law questions need to be settled early, not left for your executor to untangle after the fact.
Swiss private international law, along with recent EU instruments, creates real options to elect which law applies to your estate in cross-border situations. Used well, this can simplify administration and reduce tax friction. Ignored, it risks forum conflicts, where two countries’ courts both claim jurisdiction, and even double taxation on the same assets.
This matters more in Davos than the location might suggest, given how many residents and property owners here have international ties, whether through nationality, second homes abroad, or heirs settled outside Switzerland. A choice-of-law clause in your will or inheritance contract, drafted with input from a lawyer experienced in cross-border estates, is the practical tool that addresses this directly.
- Identify every jurisdiction your estate touches, not just where you’re domiciled.
- Ask your lawyer specifically about choice-of-law options under Swiss private international law.
- Confirm whether any foreign property is subject to forced heirship rules that could override your Swiss will.
- Revisit cross-border elements whenever you or an heir changes country of residence.
Cross-border planning is one area where a generalist adviser can genuinely miss something significant. It’s worth confirming direct cross-border experience before committing to any one legal or tax adviser for this part of the plan.
How Marmot Finance approaches legacy planning with families
Marmot Finance treats legacy planning as a modular, ongoing process built around family stewardship, not a single document signed once and filed away. The approach starts with an honest assessment of where a family actually stands: assets, structures, existing documents, and any gaps between the two.
From there, Marmot coordinates the practical work that legacy planning actually requires: bringing in the right notary and tax lawyer, helping set up or refine philanthropic vehicles like donor-advised funds, and supporting the governance conversations that keep family businesses and multi-generational assets intact rather than contested. This isn’t a one-off engagement. Families typically need ongoing governance support as circumstances shift, a marriage, a business sale, a move across cantons, and Marmot Finance stays involved through those changes rather than disappearing after the initial plan is signed.
How Marmot Finance can help with legacy planning in Davos
If you’re based in Davos and want to move from “we should really sort this out” to an actual plan, Marmot Finance’s wealth management service in Davos is built specifically for families juggling investment strategy alongside succession and philanthropic questions, without needing to manage three separate advisers yourself.
As a FINMA-accredited manager working exclusively with women and families across Switzerland and Europe, Marmot Finance coordinates directly with notaries and tax lawyers to implement the plan once it’s agreed, rather than handing you a strategy document and leaving the execution to you. That coordination is the practical difference between a plan that exists on paper and one that actually gets carried out.
Before your first consultation, it helps to gather your current will or inheritance contract, a summary of major assets by jurisdiction, and a note of any family circumstances that affect succession, second marriages, stepchildren, or heirs living abroad. Book an initial consultation through Marmot Finance’s wealth management services page to get that conversation started.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need both a will and an inheritance contract? Not always. A will covers personal, revocable wishes; an inheritance contract binds multiple parties and suits situations needing certainty, such as business succession agreements between co-owners.
Does the 2023 law change mean I need a new will? Not automatically, but it’s worth checking. The reform widened your freely disposable portion, so an older will may not reflect the flexibility you now have.
Is inheritance tax the same across Switzerland? No. There’s no federal inheritance tax; cantons set their own rates and exemptions, so domicile decisions carry real tax weight.
Should I set up a foundation for my charitable giving? Only if your giving is substantial and long-term. Most families are better served by a donor-advised fund, which carries far lower governance and administrative burden.
This article is general information, not a substitute for advice from a qualified financial advisor. Consult a qualified financial professional about your own circumstances before acting on anything here.
Sources
For the legal detail behind the 2023 reform, consult Zurich’s inheritance law guide. For family business succession data and benchmarks, the HEG Fribourg 2025 survey is the most current reference. For philanthropic fund structures, the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation explains testamentary funds in practical detail.
- Succession & estate planning 2026 - Switzerland | Chambers and Partners
- Final report 2025 Survey of family businesses
- Estate planning - the Swiss perspective | SW Legal
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