Trusts, Inheritance Claims, and Rights to Information: the Swiss Perspective

Edinburgh Centre for Private Law work-in-progress session

Inheritance disputes often revolve around events that occurred years or even decades before matters became contentious, and more often than not, potential litigants were not privy to the circumstances that led to their (alleged) claim. To make matters more difficult, Swiss rules on civil procedure do little to assist parties in obtaining evidence to support their case, which often compels litigants to enforce a (substantive) right to information in a separate lawsuit before starting proceedings.

This presentation will look at the rights to information available to heirs based on (Swiss) inheritance law and discuss how they can be enforced in court, particularly when the "target" of the information request is a trust subject to a foreign trust law. 

Speaker

Michelle Kalt, Visiting PhD student from the University of Zurich