MLL Legal is one of the leading law firms in Switzerland. They advise clients in all areas of commercial law. On their online news portal, they regularly publish interesting articles on commercial law – often including legal aspects relating to real estate. Recently, the legal experts dealt with the question of what needs to be considered when transferring a property during one’s lifetime subject to usufruct or a right of residence.
The three authors write in their detailed document that real estate is not only often the largest asset of a spouse, but is also associated with many emotions. There you will not only find legally validated definitions of the most important terms, such as usufruct and how it arises, or right of residence and what this includes and the consequences under inheritance law.
The text also helps with questions as to whether a property should be transferred to one of the children during their lifetime as a gift or by means of an advance inheritance and whether only the bare ownership of the property should be transferred and the usufruct or a right of residence reserved. If you are interested in this topic, you should download the text as a PDF here.
The consequences under inheritance law of a transfer of a property during one’s lifetime by means of a gift or advance withdrawal, by sale, in particular at a preferential price, or by granting a usufruct or right of residence to a descendant will then be dealt with in a separate article; planning options under inheritance law for real estate that is to be bequeathed by will, possibly with the granting of usufruct to the surviving spouse, have already been dealt with in two separate articles, especially with regard to the new law that came into force on 1 January 2023. January 2023, especially with regard to the revision of inheritance law that came into force on January 1, 2023, writes MLL.
