¹ The com­pet­ent au­thor­ity must of its own ac­cord take all meas­ures ne­ces­sary to en­sure prop­er suc­ces­sion.⁴⁹⁰

² In the cases en­vis­aged by law, in par­tic­u­lar, such meas­ures in­clude seal­ing the es­tate, draw­ing up the in­vent­ory, ap­point­ing the es­tate ad­min­is­trat­ors and read­ing out the wills of the de­ceased.

³ ...⁴⁹¹

The or­der to seal the es­tate is giv­en whenev­er provided for by can­ton­al law.

¹ The or­der to draw up an in­vent­ory is giv­en:

1.

where an heir is un­der guard­i­an­ship or is to be made a ward of court;

2.

where an heir is per­man­ently ab­sent and without rep­res­ent­a­tion;

3.

at the re­quest of one of the heirs;

4.

where an adult heir is or is to be made sub­ject to a gen­er­al deputy­ship.⁴⁹²

² The in­vent­ory is drawn up in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions of can­ton­al law and nor­mally must be com­pleted with­in two months of the death of the de­ceased.

³ Can­ton­al le­gis­la­tion may re­quire that an in­vent­ory be drawn up in oth­er cases.

¹ Es­tate ad­min­is­trat­ors are ap­poin­ted:

1.

where such an ap­point­ment is in the best in­terests of an heir who is per­man­ently ab­sent and without rep­res­ent­a­tion;

2.

where none of the claimants may ad­equately es­tab­lish his or her suc­ces­sion rights or the ex­ist­ence of an heir is un­cer­tain;

3.

where not all heirs are known;

4.

in spe­cial cases provided for by law.

² Where the de­ceased had named an ex­ecut­or, ad­min­is­tra­tion of the es­tate is en­trus­ted to him or her.

³ Where the de­ceased was sub­ject to a deputy­ship that cov­ers as­set man­age­ment, the deputy is re­spons­ible for ad­min­is­ter­ing the es­tate un­less oth­er in­struc­tions ap­ply.⁴⁹³

¹ If the au­thor­ity is un­cer­tain as to wheth­er the de­ceased is sur­vived by heirs or wheth­er it is aware of all the heirs, the au­thor­ity must by ap­pro­pri­ate pub­lic means call on all per­sons with suc­ces­sion rights to come for­ward and claim them with­in one year.

² If no such per­son comes for­ward dur­ing this time and if no heirs are known to the au­thor­ity, the es­tate passes to the state au­thor­ity with right to suc­ceed, sub­ject to any ac­tion for re­cov­ery of in­her­it­ance.

¹ If the de­ceased left a will, this must be sub­mit­ted to the au­thor­ity without delay even if it ap­pears to be in­val­id.

² The pub­lic of­fi­cial by whom the will was re­cor­ded or with whom it was de­pos­ited or any oth­er per­son who had cus­tody of the will or found it among the per­son­al ef­fects of the de­ceased is per­son­ally re­spons­ible on learn­ing of the test­at­or’s death for en­sur­ing that the will is sub­mit­ted to the au­thor­ity.

³ Once the will has been sub­mit­ted, the au­thor­ity must, where feas­ible after hear­ing all in­ter­ested parties, either re­lease the es­tate to the stat­utory heirs on a pro­vi­sion­al basis or ap­point es­tate ad­min­is­trat­ors.

¹ The test­at­or’s will must be opened and read out by the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity with­in one month of its sub­mis­sion.

² All heirs known to the au­thor­ity are summoned to at­tend the read­ing.

³ If the test­at­or left more than one will, all are to be sub­mit­ted to the au­thor­ity and opened and read out by it.

¹ At the es­tate’s ex­pense, all in­ter­ested parties re­ceive a copy of the pro­vi­sions of the will as re­late to them.

² Leg­atees of un­known where­abouts are in­formed by ap­pro­pri­ate pub­lic no­tice.

¹ One month after no­ti­fic­a­tion of the in­ter­ested parties, at the re­quest of the named heirs the pro­bate au­thor­ity is­sues such per­sons with a cer­ti­fic­ate con­firm­ing them as heirs, sub­ject to ac­tion of de­clar­a­tion of in­valid­ity and for re­cov­ery of in­her­it­ance, provid­ing their en­ti­tle­ment has not ex­pressly been chal­lenged by the stat­utory heirs or the leg­atees of an earli­er will.

² At the same time the es­tate ad­min­is­trat­or will be in­struc­ted, where ap­plic­able, to re­lease the es­tate in­to their pos­ses­sion.

¹ On the death of the de­ceased, the es­tate in its en­tirety vests by op­er­a­tion of law in the heirs.

² Sub­ject to the stat­utory ex­cep­tions, the de­ceased’s claims, rights of own­er­ship, lim­ited rights in rem and rights of pos­ses­sion auto­mat­ic­ally pass to the heirs and the debts of the de­ceased be­come the per­son­al debts of the heirs.

³ Vest­ing in the named heirs takes ef­fect ret­ro­act­ively from the date on which the suc­ces­sion pro­cess com­menced and the stat­utory heirs must re­lin­quish the es­tate to them ac­cord­ing to the rules gov­ern­ing pos­ses­sion.

¹ The leg­atees have a per­son­al claim against the ob­lig­ors of their legacies or, where no-one is spe­cific­ally named as such, against the leg­al or named heirs.

² Un­less oth­er­wise provided by test­a­ment­ary dis­pos­i­tion, the claim be­comes due once the ob­lig­or has ac­cep­ted the in­her­it­ance or is no longer able to dis­claim it.

³ If the heirs fail to ful­fil their ob­lig­a­tion, they may be sued for re­lease of the be­queathed prop­erty or, where the leg­acy per­tains to per­form­ance of some ac­tion, for dam­ages.

¹ Where the be­quest to the leg­atee is a usu­fruct or an­nu­ity or oth­er re­cur­ring be­ne­fit, un­less oth­er­wise stip­u­lated, his or her claim is de­term­ined ac­cord­ing to the pro­vi­sions of prop­erty law and the Code of Ob­lig­a­tions.

² If the leg­acy is a life as­sur­ance claim matur­ing on the death of the test­at­or, the leg­atee is en­titled to as­sert that claim dir­ectly.

¹ The claims of the test­at­or’s cred­it­ors pre­cede those of leg­atees.

² The claims of the heir’s cred­it­ors rank equally with those of the test­at­or’s cred­it­ors, provided the heir ac­quired the in­her­it­ance without re­ser­va­tion.

¹ If, after the legacies have been dis­trib­uted, the heirs pay debts of the es­tate that were pre­vi­ously un­known to them, they are en­titled to re­im­burse­ment from the leg­atees of an amount cor­res­pond­ing to the pro­por­tion­ate abate­ment of such legacies that the heirs could have claimed.

² However, the leg­atees may be held li­able only in the amount by which they are en­riched at the time such re­im­burse­ment is de­man­ded.

¹ The leg­al and named heirs are en­titled to dis­claim the in­her­it­ance passing to them.

² There is a pre­sump­tion of a dis­claim­er if at the time of his or her death the de­ceased had been of­fi­cially de­clared in­solv­ent or was mani­festly in­solv­ent.

¹ The time lim­it for a dis­claim­er is three months.

² For stat­utory heirs, this lim­it be­gins on the date on which they learned of the death, un­less they can show that they did not learn of their suc­ces­sion rights un­til later, and for named heirs it be­gins on the date on which they re­ceived of­fi­cial no­ti­fic­a­tion of the test­at­or’s dis­pos­i­tion.

If an in­vent­ory has been drawn up as a pre­cau­tion­ary meas­ure, the dis­claim­er time lim­it for all heirs be­gins on the date on which the au­thor­ity no­ti­fied them that the in­vent­ory was com­plete.

¹ If an heir dies be­fore dis­claim­ing or ac­cept­ing an in­her­it­ance, the right to dis­claim passes to his or her heirs.

² For such heirs, the dis­claim­er time lim­it be­gins on the date on which they learned that the in­her­it­ance passed to the de­ceased heir and ends no soon­er than the date on which the time lim­it for dis­claim­ing the in­her­it­ance from the de­ceased heir ex­pires.

³ Where such heirs dis­claim the in­her­it­ance and it passes to oth­er heirs who pre­vi­ously had no suc­ces­sion rights, the dis­claim­er time lim­it for the lat­ter be­gins on the date on which they learned of the dis­claim­er.

¹ An heir must de­clare his or her dis­claim­er or­ally or in writ­ing to the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity.

² It must be un­con­di­tion­al and without re­ser­va­tion.

³ The au­thor­ity keeps an of­fi­cial re­cord of dis­claim­ers.

¹ If the heir fails to de­clare that he or she dis­claims the in­her­it­ance with­in the rel­ev­ant time lim­it, he or she ac­quires it without re­ser­va­tion.

² Where an heir has in­terfered in the af­fairs of the es­tate be­fore ex­piry of the dis­claim­er time lim­it or has ac­ted in a man­ner not con­du­cive to ad­min­is­ter­ing the es­tate or main­tain­ing the de­ceased’s busi­ness activ­it­ies, or where he or she has ap­pro­pri­ated or con­cealed ob­jects be­long­ing to the es­tate, he or she is no longer en­titled to dis­claim the in­her­it­ance.

¹ Where the de­ceased has not made a test­a­ment­ary dis­pos­i­tion and one of two or more heirs dis­claims the in­her­it­ance, his or her share of the es­tate passes to the oth­er heirs as if he or she had pre­de­ceased.

² Where the de­ceased has made test­a­ment­ary dis­pos­i­tion, any share of the es­tate dis­claimed by a named heir passes to the test­at­or’s nearest stat­utory heirs, un­less oth­er in­ten­tions on the part of the test­at­or are evid­ent from the dis­pos­i­tion.

¹ Where the in­her­it­ance is dis­claimed by all the nearest heirs, the es­tate is li­quid­ated by the bank­ruptcy of­fice.

² If li­quid­a­tion pro­duces a sur­plus after pay­ment of debts, this passes to those en­titled to in­her­it as if they had not dis­claimed it.

If the de­ceased’s is­sue have dis­claimed the in­her­it­ance, the au­thor­ity no­ti­fies the dis­claim­er to the sur­viv­ing spouse, who is en­titled to de­clare ac­cept­ance with­in one month.

¹ When dis­claim­ing the in­her­it­ance, the heirs may re­quest that it be offered to their sub­sequent heirs be­fore the es­tate is li­quid­ated.

² In this event, the au­thor­ity in­forms the sub­sequent heirs that the pre­ced­ing heirs have dis­claimed, and if the former fail to de­clare their ac­cept­ance of the in­her­it­ance with­in one month, they are like­wise deemed to have dis­claimed it.

Where there is good cause, the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity may grant the leg­al and named heirs an ex­ten­sion of the time lim­it or set a new one.

Where a leg­atee dis­claims a leg­acy, it be­comes void in fa­vour of the ob­lig­or, un­less oth­er in­ten­tions on the part of the test­at­or are evid­ent from his or her dis­pos­i­tion.

¹ Where an over­indebted heir has dis­claimed an in­her­it­ance in or­der to with­hold it from his or her cred­it­ors, the lat­ter or the bank­ruptcy ad­min­is­trat­ors may chal­lenge the dis­claim­er with­in six months un­less their claims are se­cured.

² If their chal­lenge is up­held, the in­her­it­ance is placed in of­fi­cial li­quid­a­tion.

³ Any sur­plus serves first to sat­is­fy the chal­len­ging cred­it­ors and any bal­ance re­main­ing after re­demp­tion of the oth­er debts passes to the heirs in whose fa­vour the dis­claim­er was made.

¹ Where the de­ceased was in­solv­ent and his or her heirs dis­claim the in­her­it­ance, they re­main li­able to his or her cred­it­ors to the ex­tent that in the five years pri­or to his or her death they re­ceived prop­erty or as­sets from him or her which on di­vi­sion of the es­tate would have been sub­ject to hotch­pot.

² The en­dow­ment of newly-weds ac­cord­ing to loc­al cus­tom and the costs of rais­ing and edu­cat­ing chil­dren are not af­fected by such li­ab­il­ity.

³ Heirs act­ing in good faith are li­able only to the ex­tent they are still en­riched.

¹ Any heir en­titled to dis­claim his or her in­her­it­ance has the right to re­quest a pub­lic in­vent­ory.

² The re­quest must be made to the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity with­in one month in the same form as the dis­claim­er.

³ A re­quest made by one heir is also val­id for the oth­ers.

¹ The pub­lic in­vent­ory is drawn up by the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions of can­ton­al law and con­sists of a list of all the as­sets and debts of the es­tate, to­geth­er with an ap­prais­al of the value of each item in the in­vent­ory.

² Any per­son able to provide in­form­a­tion on the fin­an­cial cir­cum­stances of the de­ceased is per­son­ally ob­liged to give the au­thor­ity all the in­form­a­tion it re­quires.

³ In par­tic­u­lar, the heirs must in­form the au­thor­ity of any debts of the de­ceased that are known to them.

¹ In the course of draw­ing up the in­vent­ory, the au­thor­ity shall make a form­al call to ac­count whereby ap­pro­pri­ate pub­lic no­tices are is­sued call­ing on all cred­it­ors and debt­ors of the de­ceased, in­clud­ing cred­it­ors un­der a surety, to come for­ward and re­gister their claims and debts with­in a spe­cified time lim­it.

² Such no­tices must alert the cred­it­ors to the con­sequences of any fail­ure to re­gister.

³ The time lim­it for re­gis­ter­ing must not be earli­er than one month from the date of the first pub­lic no­tice.

¹ Claims and debts evid­ent from the pub­lic re­gisters or from the pa­pers of the de­ceased are in­cluded ex of­fi­cio.

² The debt­ors and cred­it­ors must be no­ti­fied of any such in­clu­sion.

¹ On ex­piry of the pub­lished time lim­it, the in­vent­ory is closed and made avail­able for per­us­al by all in­ter­ested parties for at least one month.

² The costs are borne by the es­tate and, where this is in­suf­fi­cient, by the heirs who re­ques­ted the in­vent­ory.

¹ While the in­vent­ory is be­ing drawn up, only the ne­ces­sary ad­min­is­trat­ive ac­tions may be taken.

² Where the au­thor­ity au­thor­ises an heir to con­tin­ue the de­ceased’s busi­ness activ­it­ies, the co-heirs may re­quest that se­cur­ity be fur­nished.

¹ While the in­vent­ory is be­ing drawn up, no ac­tion may be taken to en­force the debts of the de­ceased.

² ...⁴⁹⁵

³ Ex­cept in ur­gent mat­ters, court pro­ceed­ings may neither be com­menced nor con­tin­ued.

¹ Once the in­vent­ory is closed, all the heirs are re­ques­ted to de­clare with­in one month their in­ten­tions with re­gard to ac­quir­ing the in­her­it­ance due to them.

² Where jus­ti­fied in the cir­cum­stances, the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity may set a fur­ther time lim­it for ob­tain­ing ap­prais­als, set­tling dis­puted claims and the like.

¹ Dur­ing the set time lim­it, an heir may dis­claim his or her in­her­it­ance or re­quest of­fi­cial li­quid­a­tion or ac­cept the in­her­it­ance either sub­ject to pub­lic in­vent­ory or without re­ser­va­tion.

² Where an heir makes no de­clar­a­tion, he or she is deemed to have ac­cep­ted the in­her­it­ance sub­ject to pub­lic in­vent­ory.

¹ Where an heir ac­cepts the in­her­it­ance sub­ject to pub­lic in­vent­ory, the debts of the de­ceased lis­ted in the in­vent­ory and the as­sets pass to him or her.

² The ac­quis­i­tion of the in­her­it­ance with all at­tend­ant rights and ob­lig­a­tions takes ef­fect ret­ro­act­ively from the date on which the suc­ces­sion pro­cess com­menced.

³ The heir is li­able for debts lis­ted in the in­vent­ory both with the in­her­it­ance and with his or her own as­sets.

¹ The heirs are not li­able either per­son­ally or with the in­her­it­ance to­wards cred­it­ors of the es­tate whose claims were not in­cluded in the in­vent­ory be­cause the cred­it­ors failed to re­gister them in time.

² Where such fail­ure to re­gister claims in the in­vent­ory was through no fault of the cred­it­or or his or her claims were not in­cluded in the in­vent­ory des­pite hav­ing been re­gistered, the heir is li­able to the ex­tent he or she is en­riched by the in­her­it­ance.

³ In all cases, cred­it­ors may as­sert claims to the ex­tent these are se­cured by a li­en on the es­tate as­sets.

Any debts un­der a surety giv­en by the de­ceased are lis­ted sep­ar­ately in the in­vent­ory and may be as­ser­ted against an heir, even where he or she ac­cepts the in­her­it­ance, only in the amount that would be al­loc­ated to the surety debt if all debts of the es­tate were to be re­deemed un­der the rules gov­ern­ing bank­ruptcy.

Where an es­tate passes to a state au­thor­ity, a form­al call to ac­count is made ex of­fi­cio and the state au­thor­ity is li­able for the debts of the es­tate only in the amount of the as­sets it has in­her­ited from the es­tate.

¹ Rather than dis­claim the in­her­it­ance or ac­cept it sub­ject to pub­lic in­vent­ory, each heir is en­titled to re­quest of­fi­cial li­quid­a­tion.

² However, such re­quest may not be gran­ted if at least one co-heir ac­cepts the in­her­it­ance.

³ In the event of of­fi­cial li­quid­a­tion, the heirs are not li­able for the debts of the es­tate.

¹ Where the de­ceased’s cred­it­ors have good cause to fear that their claims will not be met and such claims are not sat­is­fied or se­cured at their re­quest, with­in three months of the death of the de­ceased or the read­ing of the will they may de­mand the of­fi­cial li­quid­a­tion of the es­tate.

² Sub­ject to the same con­di­tions, leg­atees may re­quest pro­vi­sion­al meas­ures by way of se­cur­ity.

¹ The of­fi­cial li­quid­a­tion is car­ried out by the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity or by one or more es­tate ad­min­is­trat­ors act­ing at the au­thor­ity’s be­hest.

² It be­gins with the tak­ing of an in­vent­ory and the at­tend­ant form­al call to ac­count.

³ The es­tate ad­min­is­trat­or is un­der the au­thor­ity’s su­per­vi­sion and the heirs may ap­peal to the au­thor­ity against any meas­ures taken or planned by the ad­min­is­trat­or.

¹ For the pur­pose of li­quid­a­tion, any busi­ness activ­it­ies of the de­ceased still in op­er­a­tion are brought to a close, his or her ob­lig­a­tions are per­formed, his or her claims are called in, his or her legacies are dis­trib­uted where pos­sible, his or her rights and du­ties are de­term­ined at law, where ne­ces­sary, and his or her as­sets are con­ver­ted in­to cash.

² Land formerly be­long­ing to the de­ceased is sold at pub­lic auc­tion; it may be dis­posed of by private sale only with the con­sent of all the heirs.

³ The heirs are en­titled even dur­ing the li­quid­a­tion pro­cess to re­quest that some or all of the ob­jects and mon­ies that are not re­quired for the li­quid­a­tion be re­leased in­to their pos­ses­sion.

If the es­tate is over­indebted, its li­quid­a­tion is car­ried out by the bank­ruptcy of­fice in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing bank­ruptcy.

¹ A per­son who be­lieves that, as a leg­al or named heir, he or she has a bet­ter claim than the cur­rent pos­sessor to an es­tate or a part there­of may as­sert his or her claim by bring­ing an ac­tion for re­cov­ery of in­her­it­ance.

² ...⁴⁹⁶

¹ If the claim is up­held, the pos­sessor must re­lin­quish the es­tate or the part there­of to the claimant in ac­cord­ance with the rules gov­ern­ing pos­ses­sion.

² The de­fend­ant can­not in­voke ad­verse pos­ses­sion in re­spect of prop­erty be­long­ing to the es­tate.

¹ The right to bring an ac­tion for re­cov­ery of in­her­it­ance against a de­fend­ant act­ing in good faith pre­scribes one year after the date on which the claimant learned that the prop­erty was pos­sessed by the de­fend­ant and that he or she has a bet­ter claim to it, but in all cases ten years after the death of the de­ceased or the date on which the will was read.

² The pre­script­ive peri­od for the right to bring an ac­tion against a de­fend­ant act­ing in bad faith is al­ways 30 years.

The right of a leg­atee to bring an ac­tion pre­scribes ten years after no­ti­fic­a­tion of the test­a­ment­ary dis­pos­i­tion or from the sub­sequent date on which the leg­acy be­came due.

¹ Where sev­er­al heirs in­her­it the es­tate, on suc­ces­sion and un­til such time as it is di­vided they form a com­munity in re­spect of all rights and ob­lig­a­tions of the es­tate.

² They be­come joint own­ers of the prop­erty be­long­ing to the es­tate and have joint power of dis­pos­al over the rights of the es­tate, sub­ject to con­trac­tu­al or stat­utory powers of rep­res­ent­a­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tion.

³ At the re­quest of one co-heir, the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity may ap­point a rep­res­ent­at­ive of the com­munity of heirs un­til the es­tate is di­vided.

¹ The heirs are jointly and sev­er­ally li­able for the debts of the de­ceased.

² The ap­pro­pri­ate com­pens­a­tion due to chil­dren or grand­chil­dren for con­tri­bu­tions made to the house­hold they shared with the de­ceased must be ad­ded to the debts of the es­tate un­less this would render the es­tate over­indebted.⁴⁹⁷

¹ Any heir may at any time re­quest that the es­tate be di­vided un­less he or she is un­der a con­trac­tu­al or stat­utory ob­lig­a­tion to re­main a mem­ber of the com­munity of heirs.

² On ap­plic­a­tion by an heir, the court may or­der a tem­por­ary de­fer­ral of the di­vi­sion of the es­tate or spe­cif­ic parts there­of where im­me­di­ate di­vi­sion would sub­stan­tially im­pair their value.

³ Where one heir is in­solv­ent, his or her co-heirs may ap­ply for pro­vi­sion­al meas­ures to se­cure their own claims im­me­di­ately upon suc­ces­sion.

¹ If on suc­ces­sion the rights of an un­born child need to be taken in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, the di­vi­sion of the es­tate must be de­ferred un­til the child is born.

² In the in­ter­im, the child’s moth­er is en­titled to en­joy the be­ne­fits of the joint es­tate to the ex­tent re­quired for her main­ten­ance.

Heirs who were mem­bers of the house­hold of and main­tained by the de­ceased at the time of his or her death may de­mand that they be main­tained for a fur­ther month at the es­tate’s ex­pense.

¹ Stat­utory heirs must di­vide the es­tate among them­selves and with the named heirs ac­cord­ing to the same prin­ciples.

² Ex­cept where provided oth­er­wise, they are free to de­cide on the meth­od of di­vi­sion.

³ Co-heirs in pos­ses­sion of es­tate prop­erty or in debt to the de­ceased must provide pre­cise in­form­a­tion re­gard­ing such cir­cum­stances pri­or to the di­vi­sion.

¹ The test­at­or is en­titled by means of test­a­ment­ary dis­pos­i­tion to give his or her heirs in­struc­tions con­cern­ing the di­vi­sion and the form­a­tion of por­tions.

² Such in­struc­tions are bind­ing on the heirs, sub­ject to meas­ures to bal­ance out the por­tions in the event of an in­equal­ity not in­ten­ded by the test­at­or.

³ Un­less oth­er in­ten­tions on the part of the test­at­or are evid­ent from his or her dis­pos­i­tion, any be­quest of a giv­en part of the es­tate to one par­tic­u­lar heir is deemed to be merely an in­struc­tion con­cern­ing the di­vi­sion rather than a spe­cif­ic leg­acy.

¹ At the re­quest of a cred­it­or who has ac­quired or dis­trained an in­her­it­ance that has passed to an heir or who holds un­paid debt cer­ti­fic­ates against him or her, the au­thor­it­ies must as­sist in the di­vi­sion in place of that heir.

² Can­ton­al law may provide for of­fi­cial in­ter­ven­tion in the di­vi­sion pro­cess in oth­er cases.

¹ Ex­cept where oth­er pro­vi­sions ap­ply, all heirs have an equal right to the es­tate prop­erty.

² They must dis­close to each oth­er all cir­cum­stances con­cern­ing their re­la­tion­ship with the de­ceased in­so­far as these per­tain to the just and equit­able di­vi­sion of the es­tate.

³ Each heir may re­quest that the debts of the de­ceased be re­deemed or se­cured pri­or to di­vi­sion of the es­tate.

¹ The heirs form as many por­tions or lots as there are heirs or stirpes.

² If they are un­able to reach agree­ment, at the re­quest of one heir the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity must form the lots with due re­gard to loc­al cus­tom and the per­son­al cir­cum­stances and wishes of the ma­jor­ity of the co-heirs.

³ The lots are dis­trib­uted among the heirs either as agreed or by the draw­ing of lots.

¹ Where the value of an ob­ject be­long­ing to the es­tate would be sub­stan­tially di­min­ished if such ob­ject were di­vided, it is al­loc­ated in its en­tirety to one of the heirs.

² Where the heirs are un­able to agree on the di­vi­sion or al­loc­a­tion of an ob­ject, it must be sold and the pro­ceeds di­vided.

³ At the re­quest of an heir, such sale must be car­ried out at auc­tion and, in the ab­sence of agree­ment among the heirs, the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity de­cides wheth­er such auc­tion is to be pub­lic or only among the heirs.

¹ Where the house or apart­ment in which the spouses lived or the house­hold ef­fects form part of the es­tate, the sur­viv­ing spouse may re­quest that such prop­erty be al­loc­ated to him or her against his or her por­tion.

² Where jus­ti­fied in the cir­cum­stances, at the re­quest of the sur­viv­ing spouse or the oth­er stat­utory heirs of the de­ceased, a usu­fruct or right of res­id­ence may be gran­ted rather than own­er­ship of the home.

³ The sur­viv­ing spouse can­not claim such rights in re­spect of premises in which the de­ceased prac­tised a pro­fes­sion or ran a busi­ness and which are re­quired by one of his or her is­sue in or­der to con­tin­ue the pro­fes­sion or busi­ness, sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions of ag­ri­cul­tur­al law of suc­ces­sion.

⁴ The same pro­vi­sions ap­ply mu­tatis mutandis to re­gistered part­ners.⁴⁹⁹

¹ Items which by their nature be­long to­geth­er must not be sep­ar­ated if one of the heirs ob­jects to such sep­ar­a­tion.

² Fam­ily doc­u­ments and items of spe­cial sen­ti­ment­al value to the fam­ily must not be sold if any of the heirs ob­jects.

³ If the heirs can­not reach agree­ment, the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity de­cides wheth­er to sell such items or to al­loc­ate them, against the re­cip­i­ent’s por­tion or oth­er­wise, giv­ing due re­gard to loc­al cus­tom and, in the ab­sence of such cus­tom, to the per­son­al cir­cum­stances of the heirs.

Where the ten­ant of an ag­ri­cul­tur­al en­ter­prise dies and one of his or her heirs con­tin­ues the lease on his or her own, on re­quest he or she may have the en­tire in­vent­ory (live­stock, ma­chinery, sup­plies, etc.) al­loc­ated to him or her and charged to his or her por­tion at its util­ity value.

Claims of the de­ceased against an heir are charged to the lat­ter’s por­tion.

If as a res­ult of the di­vi­sion an heir re­ceives es­tate prop­erty that is pledged to se­cure the debts of the de­ceased, the debt to the pledgee is like­wise trans­ferred to him or her.

Land is charged to the heirs’ por­tions at its mar­ket value as at the time of the di­vi­sion.

¹ Where the heirs are un­able to agree on the mar­ket value, it is es­tim­ated by an of­fi­cially ap­poin­ted ex­pert.⁵⁰³

² ...⁵⁰⁴

The meth­od of in­clud­ing and al­loc­at­ing ag­ri­cul­tur­al en­ter­prises and ag­ri­cul­tur­al land is gov­erned by the Fed­er­al Act of 4 Oc­to­ber 1991⁵⁰⁶ on Rur­al Land Rights.

¹ The stat­utory heirs are un­der a mu­tu­al ob­lig­a­tion to place in­to hotch­pot any prop­erty re­ceived from the de­ceased dur­ing his or her life­time as ad­vance­ments against their share of the es­tate.

² Un­less the de­ceased ex­pressly in­struc­ted oth­er­wise, any­thing gif­ted or gran­ted to his or her is­sue by way of dowry, en­dow­ment or as­sign­ment of as­sets, debt re­mis­sion and the like is sub­ject to hotch­pot.

¹ If a per­son ceases to be an heir be­fore or after suc­ces­sion, his or her duty of hotch­pot passes to the heirs that re­place him or her.

² The is­sue of an heir have a duty of hotch­pot in re­spect of ad­vance­ments made in his or her fa­vour even if those ad­vance­ments have not de­volved on them.

¹ When pla­cing prop­erty in hotch­pot, the heirs may at their dis­cre­tion do so either in kind or by im­put­ing its value, even if the ad­vance­ments made in their fa­vour ex­ceed the value of their share of the es­tate.

² The above pro­vi­sions are sub­ject to any con­trary in­struc­tions is­sued by the test­at­or and to the co-heirs’ right to abate­ment of the ad­vance­ments.

¹ Where ad­vance­ments to an heir ex­ceed the value of his or her share of the es­tate, sub­ject to claims in abate­ment, the sur­plus is ex­empt from hotch­pot if it may be shown that the de­ceased in­ten­ded to fa­vour said heir by such ad­vance­ments.

² Ex­emp­tion from hotch­pot is pre­sumed in the case of en­dow­ments in the usu­al or­der of mag­nitude made to the is­sue on their mar­riage.

¹ Hotch­pot is cal­cu­lated ac­cord­ing to the value of the ad­vance­ments on suc­ces­sion or, where the ad­vanced prop­erty has pre­vi­ously been sold, the sale pro­ceeds ob­tained.

² Any ex­pendit­ure on and dam­age to the prop­erty and the nat­ur­al pro­duce de­rived there­from must be al­lowed for among the heirs ac­cord­ing to the rules gov­ern­ing pos­ses­sion.

¹ Un­less it is shown that the de­ceased in­ten­ded oth­er­wise, sums ex­pen­ded by him or her on the up­bring­ing and edu­ca­tion of in­di­vidu­al chil­dren are sub­ject to hotch­pot only in­so­far as they ex­ceed the nor­mal amounts.

² Chil­dren still in edu­ca­tion or who suf­fer from dis­ab­il­it­ies must be gran­ted ap­pro­pri­ate ad­vance pay­ments on di­vi­sion of the es­tate.⁵⁰⁸

Cus­tom­ary oc­ca­sion­al gifts are not sub­ject to hotch­pot.

¹ The di­vi­sion of the es­tate be­comes bind­ing on the heirs once the lots have been formed and re­ceived or on con­clu­sion of the con­tract of di­vi­sion.

² In or­der to be val­id, the con­tract of di­vi­sion must be done in writ­ing.

¹ In or­der to be val­id, con­tracts between heirs re­gard­ing as­sign­ment of shares of the es­tate must be done in writ­ing.⁵¹⁰

² If such con­tracts are con­cluded by an heir with third parties, they do not give the lat­ter any right to par­ti­cip­ate in the di­vi­sion of the es­tate, but merely con­fer a claim on the share al­loc­ated to that heir as a res­ult of the di­vi­sion.

¹ Con­tracts con­cluded without the in­volve­ment and au­thor­isa­tion of the test­at­or between one heir and an­oth­er or between an heir and a third party re­gard­ing an in­her­it­ance that has not yet de­volved on the heir are not bind­ing.

² Any per­form­ance rendered un­der such con­tracts may be re­claimed.

¹ On com­ple­tion of the di­vi­sion, the co-heirs are mu­tu­ally li­able for the es­tate prop­erty as if they were pur­chasers and vendors.

² They must mu­tu­ally war­rant the ex­ist­ence of claims al­loc­ated to them in the di­vi­sion and, ex­cept in the case of se­cur­it­ies with a mar­ket price, are mu­tu­ally li­able as simple guar­ant­ors for the debt­or’s solvency in the amount at which such claims were brought in­to ac­count.

³ Claims un­der such war­ranty pre­scribe one year after the di­vi­sion or the sub­sequent date on which the claims fell due.

A con­tract of di­vi­sion may be chal­lenged in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing chal­lenge of con­tract in gen­er­al.

¹ Even after the di­vi­sion of the es­tate, the heirs re­main jointly and sev­er­ally li­able with their en­tire prop­erty for the debts of the test­at­or to his or her cred­it­ors, provid­ing the lat­ter have not ex­pressly or ta­citly agreed to a di­vi­sion or trans­fer of such debts.

² The joint and sev­er­al li­ab­il­ity of the co-heirs pre­scribes five years after the di­vi­sion or the sub­sequent date on which the debt claim fell due.

¹ If an heir has paid a debt owed by the de­ceased that was not al­loc­ated to him or her in the di­vi­sion, or if he or she has paid more of a debt than he or she has as­sumed, he or she has right of re­course against the co-heirs.

² Re­course is taken first against the per­son who as­sumed such debt in the di­vi­sion.

³ In all oth­er re­spects, the heirs must bear the debts in pro­por­tion to their shares in the es­tate, un­less oth­er­wise agreed.

¹ The own­er of an ob­ject is free to dis­pose of it as he or she sees fit with­in the lim­its of the law.

² He or she has the right to re­claim it from any­one with­hold­ing it from him or her and to pro­tect it against any un­war­ran­ted in­ter­fer­ence.

¹ An­im­als are not ob­jects.

² Where no spe­cial pro­vi­sions ex­ist for an­im­als, they are sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing ob­jects.

¹ The own­er of an ob­ject also has own­er­ship of all its con­stitu­ent parts.

² A con­stitu­ent part is any­thing which, ac­cord­ing to loc­al cus­tom, is held to be an es­sen­tial part of an ob­ject and which can­not be de­tached without des­troy­ing, dam­aging or al­ter­ing it.

¹ The own­er of an ob­ject also has own­er­ship of its nat­ur­al fruits.

² Nat­ur­al fruits are the peri­od­ic pro­duce and rev­en­ues cus­tom­ar­ily de­rived from an ob­ject used ac­cord­ing to its pur­pose.

³ Pri­or to sep­ar­a­tion, the nat­ur­al fruits are an in­teg­ral part of the ob­ject.

¹ Any dis­pos­i­tion af­fect­ing an ob­ject also ap­plies to its ac­cessor­ies, un­less an ex­cep­tion is made.

² Ac­cessor­ies are those chat­tels which, ac­cord­ing to loc­al cus­tom or the clear will of the main ob­ject's own­er, per­man­ently fa­cil­it­ate the man­age­ment, use or pre­ser­va­tion of the main ob­ject and are aux­il­i­ary thereto by vir­tue of hav­ing been joined to it, ad­ap­ted to it or oth­er­wise con­nec­ted with it.

³ If an ob­ject is an ac­cess­ory, it re­mains so re­gard­less of tem­por­ary sep­ar­a­tion from the main ob­ject.

Chat­tels do not qual­i­fy as ac­cessor­ies if they are in­ten­ded for tem­por­ary use or con­sump­tion by the pos­sessor of the main ob­ject, are not in­trins­ic­ally re­lated to it or are con­nec­ted with it only for stor­age, sale or hire pur­poses.

¹ Co-own­er­ship ex­ists where sev­er­al per­sons own a share in an ob­ject which is phys­ic­ally un­di­vided.

² Un­less oth­er­wise stip­u­lated, they are co-own­ers in equal meas­ure.

³ Each co-own­er has the rights and ob­lig­a­tions of own­er­ship in re­spect of his or her share in the ob­ject, and said share may be ali­en­ated and pledged by him or her, or dis­trained by his or her cred­it­ors.

¹ The co-own­ers may agree rules on use and ad­min­is­tra­tion that de­vi­ate from the stat­utory pro­vi­sions and provide therein that the rules may be amended with the con­sent of the ma­jor­ity of all co-own­ers.⁵¹⁴

^1bis Any amend­ment to the pro­vi­sions of the use and ad­min­is­tra­tion rules on the al­loc­a­tion of ex­clus­ive rights of use also re­quires the con­sent of the co-own­ers who are dir­ectly af­fected.⁵¹⁵

² Such rules can­not an­nul or re­strict the rights of each co-own­er:

1.

to re­quest such meas­ures as are ne­ces­sary to pre­serve the ob­ject’s value and ser­vice­ab­il­ity and, where re­quired, to have these ordered by a court;

2.

to take, on his or her own ini­ti­at­ive and at the ex­pense of all co-own­ers, such meas­ures as are ur­gently needed to safe­guard the ob­ject against im­min­ent or in­cre­ment­al dam­age.

¹ Each co-own­er may at­tend to or­din­ary ad­min­is­tra­tion and in par­tic­u­lar carry out re­pairs, sow­ing and har­vest­ing, short-term cus­tody and su­per­vi­sion, may con­clude con­tracts for such pur­poses and may ex­er­cise the powers de­rived from such con­tracts and from rent­al, lease, work and ser­vice agree­ments, in­clud­ing the pay­ment and ac­cept­ance of mon­ies on be­half of all the co-own­ers.

² With the con­sent of the ma­jor­ity of the co-own­ers, the au­thor­ity to carry out ad­min­is­tra­tion may be sub­mit­ted to a dif­fer­ent re­gime, sub­ject to the stat­utory pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing ne­ces­sary and ur­gent meas­ures.

¹ By the con­sent of a ma­jor­ity of the co-own­ers to­geth­er rep­res­ent­ing a ma­jor­ity share in the ob­ject, ma­jor ad­min­is­trat­ive acts may be car­ried out, not­ably in­clud­ing changes in meth­ods of cul­tiv­a­tion or use, con­clu­sion and ter­min­a­tion of rent­al and lease agree­ments, par­ti­cip­a­tion in land im­prove­ments and the ap­point­ment of an ad­min­is­trat­or whose au­thor­ity ex­tends bey­ond or­din­ary ad­min­is­trat­ive acts.

² The pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing ne­ces­sary con­struc­tion work are re­served.

Main­ten­ance, re­con­struc­tion and renov­a­tion work ne­ces­sary to pre­serve the ob­ject’s value and ser­vice­ab­il­ity may be car­ried out with the con­sent of the ma­jor­ity of co-own­ers where such work does not fall un­der the au­thor­ity of each in­di­vidu­al co-own­er to take or­din­ary ad­min­is­trat­ive steps.

¹ Renov­a­tions and re­fur­bish­ments aimed at en­han­cing the value or im­prov­ing the ob­ject’s prof­it­ab­il­ity or ser­vice­ab­il­ity re­quire the ap­prov­al of a ma­jor­ity of the co-own­ers to­geth­er rep­res­ent­ing a ma­jor­ity share in the ob­ject.

² Al­ter­a­tions which per­man­ently hinder or render un­prof­it­able a co-own­er’s use or ex­ploit­a­tion of the ob­ject for its ex­ist­ing pur­pose may not be car­ried out without the con­sent of that co-own­er.

³ Where an al­ter­a­tion would re­quire a co-own­er to bear un­reas­on­able costs, in par­tic­u­lar be­cause they are dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the value of his or her share, the al­ter­a­tion may be car­ried out without his or her con­sent only if the oth­er co-own­ers as­sume such part of his or her share of the costs as ex­ceeds that which he or she may reas­on­ably be ex­pec­ted to meet.

¹ Build­ing works serving merely to em­bel­lish the ob­ject, im­prove its ap­pear­ance or make its use more com­fort­able or con­veni­ent may only be car­ried out with the con­sent of all the co-own­ers.

² If such works are com­mis­sioned with the con­sent of the ma­jor­ity of the co-own­ers who also rep­res­ent a ma­jor­ity share in the ob­ject, they may be car­ried out even against the wishes of a dis­sent­ing co-own­er provid­ing they do not per­man­ently im­pair the lat­ter’s right of use and en­joy­ment and the oth­er co-own­ers com­pensate him or her for the merely tem­por­ary impair­ment and as­sume his or her share of the costs.

¹ Each co-own­er is en­titled to rep­res­ent, use and ex­ploit the ob­ject in­so­far as is com­pat­ible with the rights of the oth­er co-own­ers.

² The ali­en­a­tion or en­cum­brance of the ob­ject and the modi­fic­a­tion of its des­ig­nated pur­pose re­quire the con­sent of all co-own­ers, un­less they have un­an­im­ously agreed some oth­er ar­range­ment.

³ Where mort­gage rights or real bur­dens ap­ply to co-own­er­ship shares, the co-own­ers are not per­mit­ted to fur­ther en­cum­ber the ob­ject it­self with such charges.

¹ Ex­cept where oth­er­wise provided, the ad­min­is­trat­ive costs, taxes and oth­er ex­penses arising from co-own­er­ship or in re­la­tion to the ob­ject in co-own­er­ship are borne by the co-own­ers in pro­por­tion to their shares.

² If a co-own­er has borne more than his or her fair share of such costs, he or she is en­titled to com­pens­a­tion from the oth­ers to an equi­val­ent ex­tent.

The use and ad­min­is­tra­tion rules agreed by the co-own­ers, their ad­min­is­trat­ive de­cisions and all rel­ev­ant court judg­ments and or­ders are also bind­ing on a co-own­er’s leg­al suc­cessor and on any per­son ac­quir­ing a right in rem to a co-own­er­ship share.

² They may be noted next to co-own­er­ship shares of im­mov­able prop­erty in the land re­gister.⁵²⁵

¹ A co-own­er may be ex­cluded from the com­munity of co-own­ers by court or­der if, as a res­ult of his or her con­duct or that of per­sons to whom he or she gran­ted use of the ob­ject or for whom he or she is re­spons­ible, his or her du­ties to­wards the oth­er co-own­ers in­di­vidu­ally or col­lect­ively are so ser­i­ously vi­ol­ated that con­tinu­ation of the com­munity of co-own­ers be­comes un­reas­on­able.

² Where the com­munity com­prises only two co-own­ers, each has the right to sue the oth­er; in oth­er cases, un­less oth­er­wise agreed, leg­al ac­tion against one co-own­er must be au­thor­ised by a ma­jor­ity of all the co-own­ers ex­clud­ing the per­son to be sued.

³ If the court rules in fa­vour of ex­clud­ing the de­fend­ant, it shall or­der him or her to ali­en­ate his or her share and, should he or she fail to do so with­in the al­lowed time lim­it, shall or­der it to be sold at pub­lic auc­tion in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing the forced sale of land to the ex­clu­sion of the pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing dis­sol­u­tion of co-own­er­ship.

The pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing ex­clu­sion of co-own­ers ap­ply mu­tatis mutandis to usu­fructu­ar­ies and to own­ers of oth­er rights in rem or per­son­al rights of use entered un­der pri­or­ity no­tice in the land re­gister in re­spect of co-own­er­ship shares.

¹ Every co-own­er has the right to re­quest the dis­sol­u­tion of the co-own­er­ship un­less this is ex­cluded by an agree­ment, by di­vi­sion of the ob­ject in­to con­domin­i­um units or by the ded­ic­a­tion of the ob­ject to a per­man­ent pur­pose.

² Dis­sol­u­tion may be ex­cluded for a max­im­um of 50 years by means of an agree­ment which, where the ob­ject is land, is val­id only if done as a pub­lic deed and which may be entered un­der pri­or­ity no­tice in the land re­gister.⁵²⁹

³ Dis­sol­u­tion may not be re­ques­ted at an in­op­por­tune time.

¹ Dis­sol­u­tion is ef­fected by means of phys­ic­al di­vi­sion, by private sale or sale at auc­tion and di­vi­sion of the sale pro­ceeds, or by trans­fer of the en­tire ob­ject to one or more co-own­ers who buy out the oth­ers.

² If the co-own­ers are un­able to agree on the meth­od of dis­sol­u­tion, the court will or­der the phys­ic­al di­vi­sion of the ob­ject or, where this is im­possible without sub­stan­tially di­min­ish­ing its value, its sale at pub­lic auc­tion or private auc­tion among the co-own­ers.

³ Phys­ic­al di­vi­sion giv­ing rise to un­equal shares may en­tail mon­et­ary pay­ments to bal­ance out the shares.

¹ In the event of dis­putes over own­er­ship of an­im­als kept as pets rather than for in­vest­ment or com­mer­cial pur­poses, the court will award sole own­er­ship to whichever party of­fers the bet­ter con­di­tions of an­im­al wel­fare in which to keep the an­im­al.

² The court may or­der the per­son to whom own­er­ship of the an­im­al is awar­ded to provide ap­pro­pri­ate com­pens­a­tion to the oth­er party; the court de­term­ines the amount at its dis­cre­tion.

³ The court shall take all ne­ces­sary pro­vi­sion­al meas­ures, in par­tic­u­lar in re­la­tion to the an­im­al’s care in the in­ter­im.

If sev­er­al per­sons bound to­geth­er in­to a com­munity by leg­al pro­vi­sion or con­tract own an ob­ject by vir­tue of that com­munity, they are joint own­ers and the rights of each joint own­er at­tach to the whole ob­ject.

¹ The rights and ob­lig­a­tions of the joint own­ers are de­term­ined by the rules gov­ern­ing their leg­al or con­trac­tu­al com­munity.

² Un­less oth­er­wise provided, the un­an­im­ous de­cision of all the joint own­ers is re­quired in or­der to ex­er­cise own­er­ship rights and in par­tic­u­lar to dis­pose of the ob­ject in any way.

³ For the dur­a­tion of the com­munity, the right to di­vide the ob­ject or make dis­pos­i­tions re­lat­ing to a frac­tion of it is ex­cluded.

¹ Dis­sol­u­tion oc­curs when the ob­ject is ali­en­ated or the com­munity is ter­min­ated.

² Un­less oth­er­wise provided, di­vi­sion of the ob­ject is ef­fected ac­cord­ing to the pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing co-own­er­ship.

The dis­sol­u­tion of joint own­er­ship of ag­ri­cul­tur­al en­ter­prises and ag­ri­cul­tur­al land is gov­erned by the Fed­er­al Act of 4 Oc­to­ber 1991⁵³² on Rur­al Land Rights.

¹ The ob­ject of land own­er­ship is all im­mov­able prop­erty.

² With­in the mean­ing of this Code, im­mov­able prop­erty in­cludes:

1.

par­cels of land and the build­ings there­on;

2.

dis­tinct and per­man­ent rights re­cor­ded in the land re­gister;

3.

mines;

4.

co-own­er­ship shares in im­mov­able prop­erty.

³ An ease­ment re­lat­ing to im­mov­able prop­erty may be re­cor­ded in the land re­gister as an in­de­pend­ent and per­man­ent right if it:

1.

is not cre­ated in fa­vour of a be­nefited prop­erty nor ex­clus­ively for a spe­cif­ic per­son; and

2.

is es­tab­lished for at least 30 years or for an un­lim­ited peri­od.⁵³⁵

¹ A par­cel of land may be linked to an­oth­er par­cel of land such that the own­er of the main par­cel of land is also the own­er of the at­tached par­cel of land. The at­tached par­cel shares the same leg­al des­tiny as the main par­cel and may not be ali­en­ated, pledged or en­cumbered sep­ar­ately.

² If the par­cels are linked for a per­man­ent pur­pose, the stat­utory right of pre-emption of the co-own­ers and the right to de­mand dis­sol­u­tion may not be claimed.

¹ The ac­quis­i­tion of land own­er­ship must be re­cor­ded in the land re­gister.

² In the case of ap­pro­pri­ation, in­her­it­ance, com­puls­ory pur­chase, debt en­force­ment or court judg­ment, the ac­quirer be­comes the own­er even be­fore re­gis­tra­tion in the land re­gister but ob­tains the power of dis­pos­al over the im­mov­able prop­erty only once he or she has been re­cor­ded as the own­er in the land re­gister.

¹ In or­der to be bind­ing, a con­tract to trans­fer land own­er­ship must be ex­ecuted as a pub­lic deed.

² Test­a­ment­ary dis­pos­i­tion and mar­it­al con­tracts re­quire the forms pre­scribed by the law of suc­ces­sion and mar­it­al prop­erty law.

¹ Im­mov­able prop­erty re­cor­ded in the land re­gister may be ap­pro­pri­ated only if the re­gister es­tab­lishes that it has no own­er.

² Ap­pro­pri­ation of land not re­cor­ded in the land re­gister is sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing own­er­less ob­jects.

¹ If new ex­ploit­able land is formed from pre­vi­ously own­er­less land as a res­ult of al­lu­vi­on, filling or ground dis­place­ment, changes in the course or level of pub­lic wa­ters or in some oth­er man­ner, such land be­longs to the can­ton in which it lies.

² The can­tons are free to al­loc­ate such land to own­ers of ad­join­ing land.

³ If a per­son can show that parts of ground have be­come de­tached from his or her prop­erty, he or she is en­titled to take them back with­in an ap­pro­pri­ate peri­od.

¹ Ground dis­place­ment from one par­cel of land to an­oth­er does not al­ter the bound­ar­ies of the par­cels.

² Earth and oth­er ob­jects mov­ing from one par­cel to the oth­er in the pro­cess are sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing driftage or the join­ing and mix­ing of chat­tels.

¹ The gen­er­al prin­ciple whereby ground dis­place­ment does not al­ter land bound­ar­ies does not ap­ply to areas des­ig­nated by the can­tons as be­ing in per­man­ent danger of ground dis­place­ment.

² When des­ig­nat­ing such areas, due con­sid­er­a­tion shall be giv­en to the char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the land in ques­tion.

³ Where a par­cel of land forms part of such an area, this fact must be no­ti­fied in an ap­pro­pri­ate man­ner to the in­ter­ested parties and re­cor­ded in the land re­gister.

¹ If a land bound­ary is rendered im­prac­tic­al by ground dis­place­ment, any af­fected landown­er may re­quest that it be re­drawn.

² Any loss or gain in value shall be bal­anced out.

Where a per­son has been wrongly re­cor­ded in the land re­gister as the own­er of im­mov­able prop­erty, his or her own­er­ship may no longer be chal­lenged if he or she has been in pos­ses­sion of it in good faith, un­in­ter­rup­tedly and without chal­lenge for ten years.

¹ Where a per­son has been in pos­ses­sion of im­mov­able prop­erty not re­cor­ded in the land re­gister un­in­ter­rup­tedly and without chal­lenge for 30 years as if it were his or her prop­erty, he or she has the right to be re­gistered as the own­er.

² The same right ap­plies on the same con­di­tions to a per­son in pos­ses­sion of im­mov­able prop­erty whose own­er is not evid­ent from the land re­gister or who was de­clared dead or pre­sumed dead at the be­gin­ning of the 30-year ad­verse pos­ses­sion peri­od.

³ However, such re­gis­tra­tion may be made only by court or­der on ex­piry of a pub­licly no­ti­fied peri­od for ob­jec­tions, provided no such ob­jec­tions have been raised or those raised have been dis­missed.

The rules for com­put­ing, in­ter­rupt­ing and sus­pend­ing ad­verse pos­ses­sion time lim­its are de­term­ined mu­tatis mutandis by the pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing pre­scrip­tion of debt claims.

¹ Own­er­less and pub­lic ob­jects are sub­ject to the sov­er­eignty of the can­ton on whose ter­rit­ory they are situ­ated.

² No rights of private own­er­ship ap­ply to pub­lic wa­ters or to land not suit­able for cul­tiv­a­tion, such as rocks and scree, firn and gla­ciers, or to springs rising there­from, un­less proof to the con­trary is pro­duced.

³ The can­tons shall en­act the pro­vi­sions re­quired to gov­ern the ap­pro­pri­ation of own­er­less land, ex­ploit­a­tion and com­mon use of pub­lic ob­jects such as roads, town and vil­lage squares, wa­ter­ways and ri­ver­beds.

¹ By vir­tue of ac­quis­i­tion, the ac­quirer gains a per­son­al claim against the own­er to be re­cor­ded in the land re­gister and, should the own­er re­fuse, the right to have own­er­ship awar­ded by court or­der.

² In the case of ap­pro­pri­ation, in­her­it­ance, com­puls­ory pur­chase, debt en­force­ment or court judg­ment, the ac­quirer may ob­tain such re­gis­tra­tion on his or her own ini­ti­at­ive.

³ Changes to land own­er­ship oc­cur­ring by op­er­a­tion of law as a res­ult of mar­it­al com­munity of prop­erty or the dis­sol­u­tion there­of shall be re­cor­ded in the land re­gister at the re­quest of either spouse.⁵⁴⁰

¹ Land own­er­ship is ex­tin­guished on de­le­tion of the land re­gister entry and on com­plete loss of the im­mov­able prop­erty.

² In the case of com­puls­ory pur­chase, the time at which the loss oc­curs is de­term­ined ac­cord­ing to fed­er­al and can­ton­al com­puls­ory pur­chase law.

¹ If the own­er re­cor­ded in the land re­gister can­not be iden­ti­fied, if his or her ad­dress is un­known or if the name or ad­dress of one or more of his or her heirs is un­known, the court may on ap­plic­a­tion or­der the re­quired meas­ures.

² The court may in par­tic­u­lar ap­point a rep­res­ent­at­ive. On ap­plic­a­tion, it shall stip­u­late the ex­tent of the powers of rep­res­ent­a­tion. Un­less it stip­u­lates oth­er­wise, such powers shall be lim­ited to meas­ures to main­tain the prop­erty.

³ The fol­low­ing may ap­ply for meas­ures to be ordered:

1.

any per­son with a le­git­im­ate in­terest;

2.

the land re­gister at the loc­a­tion of the im­mov­able prop­erty.

⁴ The or­der­ing of meas­ures does not in­ter­rupt the peri­od re­quired to ob­tain ex­traordin­ary ad­verse pos­ses­sion.

If a leg­al en­tity or oth­er rights hold­er that is re­cor­ded in the land re­gister as the own­er no longer has the re­quired man­age­ment bod­ies, and per­son with a le­git­im­ate in­terest or the land re­gister at the loc­a­tion of the im­mov­able prop­erty may ap­ply to the court for the re­quired meas­ures re­lat­ing to the im­mov­able prop­erty to be ordered.

¹ Land own­er­ship ex­tends up­wards in­to the air and down­wards in­to the ground to the ex­tent de­term­ined by the own­er’s le­git­im­ate in­terest in ex­er­cising his or her own­er­ship rights.

² With­in the lim­its pre­scribed by law, it in­cludes all build­ings and plants as well as springs.

¹ Land bound­ar­ies are es­tab­lished by the land re­gister plans and by bound­ary mark­ings on the land it­self.

² In the event of dis­crep­ancy between the ex­ist­ing land re­gister plans and the bound­ary mark­ings, the land re­gister plans are pre­sumed cor­rect.

³ The fore­go­ing pre­sump­tion does not ap­ply to areas des­ig­nated by the can­ton as be­ing in per­man­ent danger of ground dis­place­ment.⁵⁴³

Every landown­er is ob­liged, at the re­quest of his or her neigh­bour, to co-op­er­ate in es­tab­lish­ing the bound­ary where it is un­clear, wheth­er by amend­ment of the land re­gister plans or by af­fix­ing bound­ary mark­ers.

Where bound­ar­ies are marked by fea­tures such as walls, hedges and fences, such fea­tures are pre­sumed to be jointly owned by the two neigh­bour­ing landown­ers.

¹ Where a per­son uses ma­ter­i­als be­long­ing to an­oth­er in build­ing work on his or her own land or ma­ter­i­als of his or her own on land be­long­ing to an­oth­er, such ma­ter­i­als be­come an in­teg­ral part of the par­cel of land.

² However, where such ma­ter­i­als are used against the will of their own­er, the lat­ter is en­titled to de­mand that the ma­ter­i­als be re­moved and re­turned to him or her at the landown­er’s ex­pense to the ex­tent this is pos­sible without caus­ing dis­pro­por­tion­ate dam­age.

³ On the same con­di­tion, where the ma­ter­i­als were used against the will of the landown­er, the lat­ter may de­mand that they be re­moved from his or her land at the ex­pense of the build­er.

¹ Where the ma­ter­i­als are not re­moved from the land, the landown­er must provide ap­pro­pri­ate com­pens­a­tion for the cost of the ma­ter­i­als.

² Where the landown­er on whose land the build­ing work was car­ried out ac­ted in bad faith, the court may award full dam­ages.

³ Where the own­er of the ma­ter­i­als used in the build­ing work ac­ted in bad faith, the dam­ages awar­ded may not ex­ceed the min­im­um value of the build­ing work to the landown­er.

Where the value of the build­ing plainly ex­ceeds the value of the land, the party act­ing in good faith may re­quest that own­er­ship of both build­ing and land be as­signed to the own­er of the ma­ter­i­als in ex­change for ap­pro­pri­ate com­pens­a­tion.

¹ Build­ings and oth­er struc­tures en­croach­ing from one par­cel of land onto an­oth­er re­main part of the par­cel from which they ori­gin­ate, provid­ing their own­er has a right in rem to their ex­ist­ence.

² The right to en­croach on neigh­bour­ing land may be re­cor­ded as an ease­ment in the land re­gister.

³ If an in­jured party fails to ob­ject in timely man­ner to an un­au­thor­ised en­croach­ment, des­pite be­ing aware of it, where jus­ti­fied in the cir­cum­stances the build­er of the en­croach­ing struc­ture, provided he or she ac­ted in good faith, may be gran­ted own­er­ship of the en­croach­ing part there­of or of the land be­low it in ex­change for ap­pro­pri­ate com­pens­a­tion.

¹ Build­ings and oth­er struc­tures that are dug in­to or built onto land be­long­ing to an­oth­er per­son or oth­er­wise per­man­ently con­nec­ted with that par­cel of land on or be­low its sur­face may have a sep­ar­ate own­er provided their ex­ist­ence is re­cor­ded as an ease­ment in the land re­gister.

² The cre­ation of rights to build­ings in re­spect of in­di­vidu­al storeys of a build­ing is not per­mit­ted.

¹ Pipes, cables and con­duits for wa­ter, gas, elec­tri­city and the like loc­ated out­side the par­cel of land which they serve are, ex­cept where oth­er­wise reg­u­lated, the prop­erty of the util­ity plant from which they come or to which they lead.⁵⁴⁴

² Where the pro­vi­sions of the law of neigh­bours do not ap­ply, the en­cum­brance of par­cels of land by rights in rem re­lat­ing to such pipes, cables and con­duits be­long­ing to an­oth­er per­son is es­tab­lished by way of ease­ment.

³ If the pipe, cable or con­duit is vis­ible, the ease­ment is cre­ated when the pipe, cable or con­duit is laid. In oth­er cases, it is cre­ated by entry in the land re­gister.⁵⁴⁵

¹ Sheds, huts, shacks, cab­ins and the like re­tain their sep­ar­ate own­er if they are con­struc­ted on land be­long­ing to an­oth­er per­son without the in­ten­tion of be­com­ing a per­man­ent fix­ture.

² Their ex­ist­ence is not re­cor­ded in the land re­gister.

¹ Where a per­son uses an­oth­er per­son’s plants on his or her own land or his or her own plants on an­oth­er per­son’s land, the same rights and ob­lig­a­tions arise as for the use of build­ing ma­ter­i­als or for mov­able struc­tures.

² An ease­ment cor­res­pond­ing to a build­ing right may be cre­ated in re­spect of in­di­vidu­al plants and plant­a­tions for a min­im­um of ten and a max­im­um of 100 years.⁵⁴⁶

³ The ser­vi­ent own­er may re­quest the ter­min­a­tion of the ease­ment be­fore the end of the agreed dur­a­tion in the event of the ter­min­a­tion of a lease agree­ment con­cluded between him or her and the ease­ment be­ne­fi­ciary con­cern­ing the use of the land. The court shall de­term­ine the fin­an­cial con­sequences tak­ing due ac­count of all the cir­cum­stances.⁵⁴⁷

¹ Where a per­son in­curs or is at risk of dam­age be­cause a landown­er acts in ex­cess of his or her own­er­ship rights, he or she may sue for abate­ment of the dam­age or for pro­tec­tion against any im­min­ent dam­age and for dam­ages.

² Where a build­ing or in­stall­a­tion de­prives a neigh­bour­ing par­cel of land of cer­tain prop­er­ties, the afore­men­tioned rights ap­ply only if the reg­u­la­tions that ap­plied at the time the build­ing or in­stall­a­tion was con­struc­ted were not com­plied with.⁵⁴⁹

Where a landown­er tem­por­ar­ily causes ex­cess­ive and un­avoid­able dis­ad­vant­ages to a neigh­bour while man­aging his or her par­cel of land law­fully, in par­tic­u­lar by build­ing and thus causes dam­age, the neigh­bour may only claim dam­ages from the landown­er.

¹ Stat­utory re­stric­tions on own­er­ship ex­ist ir­re­spect­ive of wheth­er they are re­cor­ded in the land re­gister.

² Any lift­ing or modi­fic­a­tion there­of by agree­ment is in­val­id un­less ex­ecuted in the form of a pub­lic deed and re­cor­ded in the land re­gister.

³ Pub­lic law re­stric­tions on own­er­ship may not be re­voked or mod­i­fied.

¹ Stat­utory rights of pre-emption may also be ex­er­cised in the case of com­puls­ory sale at auc­tion, but only at the auc­tion it­self and on the con­di­tions that ap­ply to a sale to the highest bid­der; in oth­er re­spects stat­utory rights of pre-emption may be ex­er­cised sub­ject to the con­di­tions that ap­ply to con­trac­tu­al rights of pre-emption.

² The right of pre-emption be­comes void if the land is sold to a per­son with a right of pre-emption of equal or high­er rank.

³ Stat­utory rights of pre-emption may neither be in­her­ited nor as­signed. They take pre­ced­ence over con­trac­tu­al rights of pre-emption.

¹ Where a pur­chase agree­ment is con­cluded, the vendor must no­ti­fy per­sons with a right of pre-emption of the terms there­of.

² If a per­son wishes to ex­er­cise his or her right of pre-emption, he or she must as­sert it with­in three months of learn­ing of the con­clu­sion and terms of the pur­chase agree­ment. Such a right may no longer be ex­er­cised once two years have elapsed since the entry of the new own­er in the land re­gister.

³ Dur­ing that time a per­son may ex­er­cise a right of pre-emption against any own­er of the land.

¹ An agree­ment ex­clud­ing or modi­fy­ing a stat­utory right of pre-emption is val­id only if ex­ecuted in the form of a pub­lic deed. It may be entered un­der pri­or­ity no­tice in the land re­gister provided the right of pre-emption is held by the cur­rent own­er of an­oth­er par­cel of land.

² The be­ne­fi­ciary may waive his or her stat­utory right of pre-emption in writ­ing once the event that trig­gers it has oc­curred.

¹ Co-own­ers have a right of pre-emption against any per­son ac­quir­ing a share who is not a co-own­er. If sev­er­al co-own­ers ex­er­cise their right of pre-emption, the share is al­loc­ated to them in pro­por­tion to their ex­ist­ing shares.⁵⁵⁶

² The own­er of a par­cel of land en­cumbered with a dis­tinct and per­man­ent build­ing right shall also have a right of pre-emption in re­spect of that right over any­one wish­ing to ac­quire it, and the hold­er of the right has a right of pre-emption in re­spect of the par­cel of land it en­cum­bers, provid­ing the land is used in the ex­er­cise of his or her right.

³...⁵⁵⁷

Rights of pre-emption of ag­ri­cul­tur­al en­ter­prises and ag­ri­cul­tur­al land are also gov­erned by the Fed­er­al Act of 4 Oc­to­ber 1991⁵⁵⁹ on Rur­al land Rights.

¹ In ex­er­cising their own­er­ship rights, in­clud­ing in par­tic­u­lar the right to run a busi­ness on his or her land, landown­ers are ob­liged to re­frain from any ex­cess det­ri­ment­al to neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ties.

² In par­tic­u­lar all harm­ful ef­fects that are not jus­ti­fied by the loc­a­tion and char­ac­ter of the land or by loc­al cus­tom such as air pol­lu­tion emis­sions of nox­ious va­pours, noise, vi­bra­tions, ra­di­ation or the depriva­tion of sun­light or day­light are pro­hib­ited.⁵⁶²

¹ When car­ry­ing out ex­cav­a­tion or con­struc­tion work, the own­er is not per­mit­ted to dam­age the ad­join­ing prop­er­ties by caus­ing their ter­rain to shift, ex­pos­ing it to the risk of shift­ing or by weak­en­ing ex­ist­ing struc­tures.

² Build­ings which con­tra­vene the pro­vi­sions of the law of neigh­bours are sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing en­croach­ing build­ings.

¹ The can­tons may set min­im­um sep­ar­a­tion dis­tances to be ob­served in ex­cav­a­tion and con­struc­tion works.

² They have the right to is­sue fur­ther build­ing reg­u­la­tions.

¹ Over­hanging branches and roots en­croach­ing bey­ond the bound­ary may be severed and kept by the neigh­bour if they are dam­aging his or her prop­erty and have not been re­moved with­in a reas­on­able time fol­low­ing his or her com­plaint in re­la­tion thereto.

² If a landown­er tol­er­ates branches over­hanging cul­tiv­ated or de­veloped land, he or she is en­titled to the fruit that grows on them.

³ These pro­vi­sions do not ap­ply to ad­join­ing par­cels of wood­land.

The can­tons are au­thor­ised to set min­im­um sep­ar­a­tion dis­tances for plant­a­tions de­pend­ing on the type of land and plants in­volved or to ob­lige the landown­er to per­mit the over­hanging branches or en­croach­ing roots of fruit trees and to reg­u­late or an­nul his or her right to take the fruit from such branches.

¹ Every landown­er is ob­liged to re­ceive the wa­ters flow­ing nat­ur­ally from a high­er-ly­ing par­cel of land, such as rain wa­ter, melt­ing snow and wa­ter from un­chan­nelled springs.

² No per­son may al­ter the nat­ur­al course of flow to his or her neigh­bour’s dam­age.

³ Wa­ter flow­ing to a lower-ly­ing par­cel of land and re­quired by that prop­erty may be with­held only to the ex­tent that such wa­ter is in­dis­pens­able to the high­er-ly­ing par­cel of land.

¹ Where a high­er-ly­ing par­cel of land is drained, the own­er of lower-ly­ing par­cel of land is ob­liged to re­ceive such wa­ter as pre­vi­ously flowed nat­ur­ally onto his or her land without be­ing en­titled to com­pens­a­tion.

² If he or she suf­fers dam­age as a res­ult of drain­age chan­nels, he or she may re­quire the own­er of the high­er-ly­ing par­cel of land to con­tin­ue such chan­nels through the lower-ly­ing par­cel of land at the lat­ter’s ex­pense.

¹ Every landown­er is ob­liged to per­mit wa­ter con­duits, drain­age pipes, gas pipes and the like and sub­ter­ranean or over­head cables to tra­verse his or her land in ex­change for full com­pens­a­tion, to the ex­tent that such works would be im­possible or pro­hib­it­ively ex­pens­ive if they did not tra­verse his or her land.⁵⁶³

² The right for pipes, cables and con­duits to tra­verse an ad­join­ing par­cel of land may not be claimed on the basis of the law of neigh­bours in cases sub­ject to com­puls­ory pur­chase un­der can­ton­al or fed­er­al law.

³ At the re­quest of the dom­in­ant or the ser­vi­ent own­er, such rights shall be re­cor­ded in the land re­gister as an ease­ment at the ex­pense of the dom­in­ant own­er. The right for pipes, cables and con­duits to tra­verse an ad­join­ing par­cel of land may be cited in op­pos­i­tion to a per­son ac­quir­ing a par­cel of land in good faith, even if it is not re­gistered.⁵⁶⁴

¹ The ser­vi­ent own­er is en­titled to just and equit­able con­sid­er­a­tion of his or her own in­terests.

² Where jus­ti­fied by ex­traordin­ary cir­cum­stances, he or she may re­quest that the piece of the land above which over­head pipes, cables and con­duits are to be routed to­geth­er with a reas­on­able por­tion of the sur­round­ing land be pur­chased from him or her at its full value.

¹ If cir­cum­stances change, the ser­vi­ent own­er may re­quest that the route of the pipe, cable or con­duit be altered in ac­cord­ance with his or her in­terests.

² The costs of such re-rout­ing are nor­mally borne by the own­er of the dom­in­ant prop­erty.

³ However, where jus­ti­fied by spe­cial cir­cum­stances, an ap­pro­pri­ate por­tion of the costs may be charged to the ser­vi­ent own­er.

¹ Where a landown­er does not have ad­equate ac­cess from his or her land to a pub­lic thor­ough­fare, he or she has the right to re­quire his or her neigh­bours to grant him or her the ne­ces­sary right of way in ex­change for full com­pens­a­tion.

² This right is in the first place ex­er­cised against the neigh­bour who, in the light of ex­ist­ing own­er­ship and ac­cess cir­cum­stances, may most reas­on­ably be ex­pec­ted to grant such right of way, and secondly in re­spect of the neigh­bour for whom it is least dam­aging.

³ When de­term­in­ing the route of a right of way, the in­terests of both parties must be taken in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

The can­tons re­serve the right to en­act more de­tailed pro­vi­sions which gov­ern the landown­er’s right to enter neigh­bour­ing land for the pur­poses of man­aging his or her own land or car­ry­ing out re­pairs or build­ing works and which reg­u­late rights of way for the pur­pose of till­age, wa­ter­ing cattle, trans­it over fal­low ground or in the dead sea­son, trans­it for tim­ber gath­er­ing, and the like.

¹ Rights of way es­tab­lished dir­ectly by law ex­ist without need for re­gis­tra­tion.

² However, if per­man­ent they are noted in the land re­gister.

¹ The costs of en­clos­ing a par­cel of land are borne by its own­er, sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing co-own­er­ship of bound­ary mark­ers.

² Can­ton­al law may en­act pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing the duty to en­close and the man­ner of en­clos­ure.

The costs of any struc­tures re­quired for the ex­er­cise of rights un­der the law of neigh­bours are borne by the landown­ers in pro­por­tion to their in­terests.

¹ Any per­son has the right to enter wood­lands and mead­ows and to gath­er wild ber­ries, fungi and the like to the ex­tent per­mit­ted by loc­al cus­tom ex­cept where the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity en­acts spe­cif­ic lim­ited in­junc­tions in the in­terests of con­ser­va­tion.

² Can­ton­al law may en­act more de­tailed reg­u­la­tions on ac­cess to land owned by oth­ers for the pur­poses of hunt­ing and fish­ing.

¹ If ob­jects are car­ried onto an­oth­er par­cel of land by wa­ter, wind, ava­lanche or oth­er force of nature or by chance event, or if an­im­als such as live­stock, swarms of bees, poultry and fish stray onto his or her prop­erty, the landown­er must grant the right­ful own­er ac­cess to his or her land to search for and re­trieve them.

² The landown­er is en­titled to claim dam­ages for any dam­age caused and to that end has a spe­cial li­en as to such ob­jects and an­im­als.

¹ If a per­son is able to ward off im­min­ent dam­age or present danger from him­self or her­self or oth­ers only by tres­passing on land be­long­ing to an­oth­er, the lat­ter is ob­liged to tol­er­ate such tres­pass to the ex­tent that such danger or dam­age would be con­sid­er­ably great­er than the det­ri­ment caused by the tres­pass.

² Ap­pro­pri­ate com­pens­a­tion is owed for any res­ult­ant dam­age.

The Con­fed­er­a­tion, can­tons and com­munes re­serve the right to im­pose re­stric­tions on own­er­ship that are in the pub­lic in­terest, and in par­tic­u­lar that re­late to build­ing, fire and health reg­u­la­tions, forestry and road ser­vices, towpaths, erec­tion of bound­ary mark­ings and tri­an­gu­la­tion pil­lars, land im­prove­ments, frag­ment­a­tion of land­hold­ings, con­sol­id­a­tion of ag­ri­cul­tur­al land and build­ing land, con­ser­va­tion of an­tiquit­ies and nat­ur­al monu­ments, pre­ser­va­tion of areas of nat­ur­al beauty and scen­ic vant­age points and pro­tec­tion of min­er­al springs.

¹ Where it is pos­sible to carry out land im­prove­ments, such as wa­ter­course modi­fic­a­tions, drain­age, ir­rig­a­tion, re­for­est­a­tion, path-build­ing, land con­sol­id­a­tion pro­ced­ures and the like, only by col­lect­ive en­deav­our and such en­deav­our has been ap­proved by the ma­jor­ity of the landown­ers own­ing more than half of the land in­volved, the oth­er landown­ers are ob­liged to par­ti­cip­ate. Landown­ers who choose not to par­ti­cip­ate in the de­cision-mak­ing pro­cess are deemed to con­sent. Par­ti­cip­a­tion is re­cor­ded in the land re­gister.

² The can­tons reg­u­late the pro­ced­ure. In par­tic­u­lar, they must is­sue de­tailed rules on con­sol­id­a­tion of land­hold­ings.

³ Can­ton­al le­gis­la­tion may fur­ther fa­cil­it­ate the real­isa­tion of such land im­prove­ments and may de­clare that the cor­res­pond­ing pro­vi­sions also ap­ply to build­ing land and to areas des­ig­nated as be­ing in per­man­ent danger of ground dis­place­ment.⁵⁶⁶

¹ Springs are an in­teg­ral part of the land and their own­er­ship may be ac­quired only through own­er­ship of the land from which they rise.

² Rights to spring wa­ter on land owned by oth­ers are es­tab­lished as ease­ments by entry in the land re­gister.

³ Ground­wa­ter is deemed equi­val­ent to springs.

¹ Can­ton­al law may reg­u­late, re­strict or pro­hib­it the di­ver­sion of spring wa­ters to safe­guard the pub­lic in­terest.

² In the event of con­flict between can­tons, the fi­nal de­cision rests with the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

¹ Where springs and wells that en­joy con­sid­er­able use or whose wa­ters are col­lec­ted for fur­ther use are cut off, di­min­ished or con­tam­in­ated by build­ing works, in­stall­a­tions or oth­er meas­ures to the det­ri­ment of their own­ers or right­ful users, such per­sons are en­titled to claim dam­ages.

² Where the dam­age was done neither in­ten­tion­ally nor through neg­li­gence, or the in­jured parties are them­selves at fault, the court de­term­ines the amount and man­ner of com­pens­a­tion at its dis­cre­tion.

¹ If springs and wells that are in­dis­pens­able for the ex­ploit­a­tion or hab­it­a­tion of a par­cel of land or for the sup­ply of drink­ing wa­ter are cut off or con­tam­in­ated, those af­fected have the right to de­mand that the status quo ante be re­stored where at all pos­sible.

² In oth­er cases res­tor­a­tion of the status quo ante may be de­man­ded only where this is jus­ti­fied by spe­cial cir­cum­stances.

¹ Where springs loc­ated near to each oth­er and be­long­ing to dif­fer­ent own­ers form a group rising from a com­mon catch­ment basin, each of the own­ers may re­quest that the springs be col­lect­ively cap­tured and chan­nelled to the right­ful users in pro­por­tion to the ex­ist­ing volume of flow.

² The costs of the com­mon in­stall­a­tions are borne by the right­ful users in pro­por­tion to their re­spect­ive in­terests.

³ If one user op­poses the re­quest, each user has the right to cap­ture and di­vert his or her own spring in the nor­mal man­ner, even if the volume of flow of the oth­er springs is thereby di­min­ished, and is li­able to pay com­pens­a­tion only to the ex­tent that his or her own spring is aug­men­ted by the new works.

The can­tons have the right to de­term­ine the ex­tent to which privately owned springs, wells and streams may also be used by neigh­bours and oth­er per­sons for draw­ing wa­ter, wa­ter­ing live­stock and the like.

¹ If a par­cel of land lacks the wa­ter re­quired for do­mest­ic and farm­ing re­quire­ments and if such wa­ter can­not be ob­tained from any­where else ex­cept at an en­tirely dis­pro­por­tion­ate cost and ef­fort, the own­er may re­quest that a neigh­bour able to spare such wa­ter without suf­fer­ing hard­ship al­low him or her a share of the lat­ter’s spring or well to him or her in ex­change for full com­pens­a­tion.

² When de­term­in­ing which wa­ter source is thus af­fected, the in­terests of the per­son re­quired to sup­ply the wa­ter are the primary con­sid­er­a­tion.

³ Where cir­cum­stances change, a modi­fic­a­tion of the ar­range­ment in place may be re­ques­ted.

¹ Where landown­ers make no use of springs, wells or streams, or make very little use there­of in com­par­is­on with their po­ten­tial util­ity, they may be re­quired to cede them in ex­change for full com­pens­a­tion for sup­ply­ing drink­ing wa­ter, fire hy­drants or oth­er uses in the pub­lic in­terest.

² Such com­pens­a­tion may take the form of wa­ter sup­plied from the new in­stall­a­tion.

Own­ers of drink­ing wa­ter util­it­ies have the right to ex­pro­pri­ate the land sur­round­ing their springs to the ex­tent ne­ces­sary to pro­tect them from con­tam­in­a­tion.

¹ Con­domin­i­um is a form of co-own­er­ship of im­mov­able prop­erty that gives the co-own­er the ex­clus­ive right to make sole use of spe­cif­ic parts of a build­ing there­on and design the in­teri­or of such parts.

² Each con­domin­i­um own­er is free to man­age, use and design the struc­ture of his or her own parts of the build­ing as he or she wishes but must not ob­struct any oth­er con­domin­i­um own­ers in the ex­er­cise of their own rights or in any way dam­age the com­mon parts of the build­ing, fit­tings and in­stall­a­tions or im­pair their func­tion­al ef­fect­ive­ness or ap­pear­ance.

³ Each con­domin­i­um own­er is ob­liged to main­tain his or her parts of the build­ing in the man­ner re­quired to pre­serve the sound con­di­tion and good ap­pear­ance of the build­ing as a whole.

¹ The ob­ject of the ex­clus­ive right may be in­di­vidu­al storeys or parts of a storey which must be self-con­tained with their own ac­cess and used either as dwell­ings or as self-con­tained units of rooms used for busi­ness or oth­er pur­poses, al­though sep­ar­ate an­cil­lary rooms are al­lowed.

² The con­domin­i­um own­er may not be gran­ted an ex­clus­ive right to the fol­low­ing:

1.

the land on which the build­ing stands and the build­ing right by vir­tue of which it is con­struc­ted;

2.

the parts of the build­ing that are vi­tal to the sound­ness, struc­ture and sta­bil­ity of the build­ing as a whole or of the units of oth­er con­domin­i­um own­ers or that de­term­ine the out­ward form and ap­pear­ance of the build­ing;

3.

the fit­tings and in­stall­a­tions that also serve the oth­er con­domin­i­um own­ers in the use of their units.

³ The deed of con­sti­tu­tion or a sub­sequent agree­ment among the con­domin­i­um own­ers ex­ecuted in the same form may stip­u­late that oth­er parts of the build­ing are com­mon prop­erty, fail­ing which they are pre­sumed to be the ob­ject of a ex­clus­ive right.

¹ Con­domin­i­um own­ers do not by law have first right of re­fus­al in re­spect of a third party ac­quir­ing a share, but such right may be stip­u­lated in the deed of con­sti­tu­tion or by sub­sequent agree­ment and entered un­der pri­or­ity no­tice in the land re­gister.

² Sim­il­arly, it may be stip­u­lated that the ali­en­a­tion, en­cum­brance with usu­fruct or right of res­id­ence or let­ting of a unit is val­id only if the oth­er co-own­ers do not ob­ject by res­ol­u­tion made with­in 14 days of re­ceiv­ing no­tice of such trans­ac­tion.

³ The ob­jec­tion is in­ef­fect­ive if made without good cause.⁵⁶⁸

¹ Con­domin­i­um is con­sti­tuted by entry in the land re­gister.

² Such entry may be re­ques­ted:

1.

on the basis of an agree­ment between the con­domin­i­um own­ers to con­sti­tute their shares as con­domin­i­um;

2.

on the basis of a de­clar­a­tion by the own­er of the prop­erty or the hold­er of a dis­tinct and per­man­ent build­ing right to form shares in co-own­er­ship and to con­sti­tute the same as con­domin­i­um.

³ In or­der to be val­id, the con­sti­tu­tion of con­domin­i­um must be ex­ecuted in the form of a pub­lic deed or, where provided for in a test­a­ment­ary dis­pos­i­tion or in a con­tract of di­vi­sion of es­tate, in the form pre­scribed by the law of suc­ces­sion.

¹ The deed of con­sti­tu­tion must spe­cify the man­ner in which the prop­erty is di­vided in­to con­domin­i­um units and define the share that each unit rep­res­ents of the value of the prop­erty or of the build­ing right ex­pressed as frac­tions with a com­mon de­nom­in­at­or.⁵⁷⁰

² Al­ter­a­tion of the size of a share re­quires the con­sent of all dir­ectly in­volved parties and the ap­prov­al of the as­sembly of con­domin­i­um own­ers; however, each con­domin­i­um own­er is en­titled to seek rec­ti­fic­a­tion if his or her share has been defined in­cor­rectly in er­ror or is no longer ac­cur­ate ow­ing to struc­tur­al modi­fic­a­tions to the build­ing or its sur­round­ings.

¹ Con­domin­i­um is ex­tin­guished on the loss of the prop­erty or the build­ing right and its de­le­tion from the land re­gister.

² Such de­le­tion may be re­ques­ted in ac­cord­ance with a ter­min­a­tion agree­ment or by a single con­domin­i­um own­er hold­ing all the shares, but it re­quires the con­sent of all per­sons with rights in rem to the in­di­vidu­al units which can­not be trans­ferred to the prop­erty as a whole without det­ri­ment.

³ Any con­domin­i­um own­er may re­quest ter­min­a­tion of the con­domin­i­um where:

1.

more than half the value of the build­ing has been des­troyed and re­con­struc­tion would im­pose an oner­ous bur­den on him; or

2.

the build­ing has been di­vided in­to con­domin­i­um units for more than 50 years and can no longer be used in ac­cord­ance with the reg­u­la­tions due to its poor struc­tur­al con­di­tion.⁵⁷¹

⁴ Con­domin­i­um own­ers wish­ing to main­tain the con­domin­i­um may pre­vent such ter­min­a­tion by buy­ing out the oth­ers.⁵⁷²

¹ The pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing co-own­er­ship reg­u­late the au­thor­ity to take ad­min­is­trat­ive ac­tion and in­struct con­struc­tion work.

² Ex­cept where such pro­vi­sions are man­dat­ory, they may be re­placed by oth­ers set out in the deed of con­sti­tu­tion or ad­op­ted by un­an­im­ous res­ol­u­tion of the as­sembly of con­domin­i­um own­ers.

³ Moreover, each con­domin­i­um own­er is en­titled to re­quest that a set of rules gov­ern­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion and use be drawn up and noted in the land re­gister, such rules be­ing bind­ing once ac­cep­ted by res­ol­u­tion passed by a ma­jor­ity of the con­domin­i­um own­ers who to­geth­er rep­res­ent more than one-half of the prop­erty and be­ing sub­ject to amend­ment by the same ma­jor­ity even if in­cluded in the deed of con­sti­tu­tion.

⁴ Any amend­ment to the al­loc­a­tion of ex­clus­ive rights of use in ac­cord­ance with the reg­u­la­tions shall also re­quire the con­sent of the con­domin­i­um own­ers dir­ectly af­fected.⁵⁷³

¹ The con­domin­i­um own­ers bear the charges in re­la­tion to the com­mun­al parts of the prop­erty and the costs of joint ad­min­is­tra­tion in pro­por­tion to the value of their shares.

² In par­tic­u­lar, such charges and costs in­clude:

1.

reg­u­lar main­ten­ance, re­pairs and renov­a­tions of the com­mun­al parts of the par­cel of land and the build­ing and shared fit­tings and in­stall­a­tions;

2.

ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing re­mu­ner­a­tion of the ad­min­is­trat­or;

3.

pub­lic du­ties and taxes im­posed col­lect­ively on the co-own­ers;

4.

in­terest and cap­it­al re­pay­ments to lenders to whom the prop­erty is pledged or to whom the con­domin­i­um own­ers are jointly and sev­er­ally li­able.

³ Where spe­cif­ic parts of the build­ing, fit­tings or in­stall­a­tions are of little or no be­ne­fit to cer­tain con­domin­i­um own­ers, the al­loc­a­tion of shared costs must take this in­to ac­count.

¹ The com­munity of con­domin­i­um own­ers is en­titled to es­tab­lish a li­en on each con­domin­i­um own­er’s unit as se­cur­ity for his or her por­tion of the shared costs over the pre­vi­ous three years.

² Re­gis­tra­tion of the li­en may be re­ques­ted by the ad­min­is­trat­or or, where no ad­min­is­trat­or has been ap­poin­ted, by any con­domin­i­um own­er so au­thor­ised by ma­jor­ity res­ol­u­tion or court or­der and by any per­son for whom the claim for shared costs has been dis­trained.

³ In oth­er re­spects, the pro­vi­sions gov­ern­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of a build­ing con­tract­or’s li­en ap­ply mu­tatis mutandis.

The com­munity of con­domin­i­um own­ers has the same spe­cial li­en that a lessor would have on the chat­tels loc­ated in the con­domin­i­um own­er’s unit as se­cur­ity for shared costs over the pre­vi­ous three years.

¹ The com­munity of con­domin­i­um own­ers ac­quires un­der its own name the rev­en­ue de­rived from its ad­min­is­trat­ive activ­it­ies, in­clud­ing in par­tic­u­lar con­tri­bu­tions from the in­di­vidu­al con­domin­i­um own­ers and the res­ult­ant funds, such as the renov­a­tion fund.

² The com­munity of con­domin­i­um own­ers may sue and col­lect debts in its own name and may be sued or sub­jec­ted to debt en­force­ment pro­ceed­ings.⁵⁷⁴

¹ In ad­di­tion to those rights stip­u­lated in oth­er pro­vi­sions, the as­sembly of con­domin­i­um own­ers has the fol­low­ing rights in par­tic­u­lar:

1.

to de­cide on all ad­min­is­trat­ive mat­ters out­side the ad­min­is­trat­or’s re­mit;

2.

to ap­point the ad­min­is­trat­or and su­per­vise his or her activ­it­ies;

3.

to elect a com­mit­tee or per­son to whom it may del­eg­ate ad­min­is­trat­ive mat­ters, in­clud­ing in par­tic­u­lar the tasks of ad­vising the ad­min­is­trat­or, su­per­in­tend­ing his or her man­age­ment activ­it­ies, and re­port­ing and mak­ing re­com­mend­a­tions to the as­sembly on such mat­ters;

4.

to ap­prove the budget, ac­counts and di­vi­sion of costs among the con­domin­i­um own­ers each year;

5.

to es­tab­lish a renov­a­tion fund for main­ten­ance and renov­a­tion;

6.

to safe­guard the build­ing against fire and oth­er risks and to take out the cus­tom­ary li­ab­il­ity in­sur­ance and, fur­ther­more, to re­quire any con­domin­i­um own­er who has fit­ted his or her unit out at ex­traordin­ary ex­pense to pay an ad­di­tion­al premi­um un­less he or she has ar­ranged sup­ple­ment­ary in­sur­ance for his or her own ac­count.

² In the ab­sence of any spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sions in the law, the as­sembly of con­domin­i­um own­ers and its del­eg­ates are sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions on gov­ern­ing bod­ies of as­so­ci­ations and chal­lenges to res­ol­u­tions of as­so­ci­ations.

¹ The as­sembly of con­domin­i­um own­ers is con­vened and chaired by the ad­min­is­trat­or, un­less the as­sembly re­solves oth­er­wise.

² Minutes are taken of the as­sembly’s res­ol­u­tions and held in safe­keep­ing by the ad­min­is­trat­or or the chair­man of the meet­ing.