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Swiss Civil Procedure Code
(Civil Procedure Code, CPC)

The Federal Assembly of the Swiss Confederation,

based on Article 122 paragraph 1 of the Federal Constitution1,
and having considered the Federal Council Dispatch of 28 June 20062,

decrees:

Part 1 General Provisions

Title 1 Subject Matter and Scope of Application

Art. 1 Subject matter

This Code gov­erns the pro­ceed­ings be­fore the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies for:

a.
con­ten­tious civil mat­ters;
b.
court or­ders in non-con­ten­tious mat­ters;
c.
court or­ders in mat­ters of debt en­force­ment and bank­ruptcy law;
d.
ar­bit­ra­tion.

Art. 2 International matters

The pro­vi­sions of in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies and of the Fed­er­al Act of 18 Decem­ber 19873 on Private In­ter­na­tion­al Law (PILA) are re­served.

Art. 3 Organisation of the courts and the conciliation authorities

The or­gan­isa­tion of the courts and the con­cili­ation au­thor­it­ies is in the com­pet­ence of the can­tons, un­less the law provides oth­er­wise.

Title 2 Jurisdiction of the Courts and Recusal

Chapter 1 Material Jurisdiction and Functional Jurisdiction

Art. 4 Principles

1 Can­ton­al law gov­erns the ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion and func­tion­al jur­is­dic­tion of the courts, un­less the law provides oth­er­wise.

2 If the ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion de­pends on the value in dis­pute, such value is cal­cu­lated ac­cord­ing to this Code.

Art. 5 Court of sole cantonal instance

1 The can­ton­al law des­ig­nates the court that has jur­is­dic­tion as sole can­ton­al in­stance for:

a.
dis­putes in con­nec­tion with in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty rights, in­clud­ing dis­putes con­cern­ing the nullity, own­er­ship, li­cens­ing, trans­fer and vi­ol­a­tion of such rights;
b.
car­tel law dis­putes;
c.
dis­putes on the use of a busi­ness name;
d.
dis­putes un­der the Un­fair Com­pet­i­tion Act of 19 Decem­ber 19864 if the value in dis­pute ex­ceeds 30,000 francs or if the Con­fed­er­a­tion ex­er­cises its right to file an ac­tion;
e.5
dis­putes un­der the Nuc­le­ar En­ergy Pub­lic Li­ab­il­ity Act of 13 June 20086;
f.7
ac­tions against the Con­fed­er­a­tion, provided the value in dis­pute ex­ceeds CHF 30,000;
f.
claims against the Con­fed­er­a­tion;
g.8
dis­putes re­lat­ing to the in­stig­a­tion and con­duct of a spe­cial in­vest­ig­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 697c–697hbis of the Code of Ob­lig­a­tions (CO)9;
h.10
dis­putes un­der the Col­lect­ive In­vest­ment Schemes Act of 23 June 200611, the Fin­an­cial Mar­ket In­fra­struc­ture Act of 19 June 201512 and the Fin­an­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act of 15 June 201813;
i.14
dis­putes un­der the Coat of Arms Pro­tec­tion Act of 21 June 201315, the Fed­er­al Act of 25 March 195416 on the Pro­tec­tion of the Em­blem and Name of the Red Cross and the Fed­er­al Act of 15 Decem­ber 196117 on the Pro­tec­tion of the Names and Em­blems of the United Na­tions Or­gan­iz­a­tion and oth­er In­ter­gov­ern­ment­al Or­gan­isa­tions.

2 This court is also com­pet­ent to or­der in­ter­im meas­ures be­fore an ac­tion is pending.

4 SR 241

5 Amended by An­nex 2 No 1, in force since 1 Jan. 2022 (AS 2010 1739; BBl 2006 7221; AS 2022 43; BBl 2007 5397).

6 SR 732.44

7 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

8 Amended by An­nex No 3 of the FA of 19 June 2020 (Com­pany Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2023 (AS 2020 4005; 2022 109; BBl 2017 399).

9 SR 220

10 Amended by An­nex No II 4 of the Fin­an­cial In­sti­tutes Act of 15 June 2018, in force since 1 Jan. 2020 (AS 2018 5247, 2019 4631; BBl 20158901).

11 SR 951.31

12 SR 958.1

13 SR 954.1

14 In­ser­ted by An­nex 3 No II 3 of the Coat of Arms Pro­tec­tion Act of 21 June 2013, in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 3679; BBl 2009 8533).

15 SR 232.21

16 SR 232.22

17 SR 232.23

Art. 6 Commercial court

1 The can­tons may des­ig­nate a spe­cial court that has jur­is­dic­tion as sole can­ton­al in­stance for com­mer­cial dis­putes (com­mer­cial court).

2 A dis­pute is con­sidered com­mer­cial, if:

a.
it con­cerns the com­mer­cial activ­ity of at least one party;
b.18
the value in dis­pute ex­ceeds CHF 30,000 or the dis­pute is not a prop­erty dis­pute;
c.19
the parties are re­gistered as leg­al en­tit­ies in the Swiss Com­mer­cial Re­gister or in an equi­val­ent for­eign re­gister; and
d.20
it is not a dis­pute arising from a em­ploy­ment re­la­tion­ship, un­der the Re­cruit­ment Act of 6 Oc­to­ber 198921, un­der the Gender Equal­ity Act of 24 March 199522, or re­lat­ing to the rent­ing or leas­ing of res­id­en­tial and com­mer­cial premises or to ag­ri­cul­tur­al leases.

3 If only the de­fend­ant is re­gistered as a leg­al en­tity in the Swiss Com­mer­cial Re­gister or in an equi­val­ent for­eign re­gister, but all the oth­er con­di­tions are met, the plaintiff may choose between the com­mer­cial court and the or­din­ary court.23

4 The can­tons may also as­sign to the com­mer­cial court:

a.
the dis­putes men­tioned in Art­icle 5 para­graph 1;
b.
the dis­putes re­lat­ing to the law of com­mer­cial com­pan­ies and co­oper­at­ives;
c.24
dis­putes in which all the fol­low­ing con­di­tions are met:
1.
The dis­pute con­cerns the busi­ness activ­it­ies of at least one party.
2.
The value in dis­pute is at least CHF 100,000.
3.
The parties agree to the jur­is­dic­tion of the com­mer­cial court.
4.
At the time of this agree­ment, at least one party has its dom­i­cile, ha­bitu­al res­id­ence or re­gistered of­fice abroad.

5 The com­mer­cial court is also com­pet­ent to or­der in­ter­im meas­ures be­fore an ac­tion is pending.

6 If ac­tions con­cern joint parties that are not all re­gistered as leg­al en­tit­ies in the Swiss Com­mer­cial Re­gister or in a com­par­able for­eign re­gister, the com­mer­cial court shall only have jur­is­dic­tion if all ac­tions fall with­in its jur­is­dic­tion.25

18 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

19 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

20 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

21 SR 823.11

22 SR 151.1

23 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

24 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

25 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 7 Disputes concerning insurance supplementary to social health insurance

The can­tons may des­ig­nate a court that has jur­is­dic­tion as sole can­ton­al in­stance for dis­putes re­lat­ing to in­sur­ance sup­ple­ment­ary to so­cial health in­sur­ance un­der the Fed­er­al Act of 18 March 199426 on Health In­sur­ance.

Art. 8 Direct action before the higher court

1 If in a fin­an­cial dis­pute the value in dis­pute is at least CHF 100,000, the plaintiff may, with the con­sent of the de­fend­ant, file its ac­tion dir­ectly be­fore the high­er court.

2 This court de­cides as the sole can­ton­al in­stance. It is also re­spons­ible for or­der­ing in­ter­im meas­ures be­fore an ac­tion be­comes pending.27

27 Second sen­tence in­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Chapter 2 Territorial Jurisdiction

Section 1 General Provisions

Art. 9 Mandatory jurisdiction

1 A place of jur­is­dic­tion is man­dat­ory only if the law ex­pressly so provides.

2 Parties may not derog­ate from a man­dat­ory place of jur­is­dic­tion.

Art. 10 Domicile and registered office

1 Un­less this Code provides oth­er­wise, the fol­low­ing court has jur­is­dic­tion:

a.
for ac­tions against a nat­ur­al per­son: the court at the per­son's dom­i­cile;
b.
for ac­tions against leg­al en­tit­ies, pub­lic cor­por­a­tions and in­sti­tu­tions as well as gen­er­al part­ner­ships and lim­ited part­ner­ships: the court at the loc­a­tion of their re­gistered of­fice;
c.28
for ac­tions against the Con­fed­er­a­tion: the court in the City of Bern or the court where the plaintiff's dom­i­cile, re­gistered of­fice or ha­bitu­al res­id­ence is loc­ated;
c.
for ac­tions against the Con­fed­er­a­tion: the Su­preme Court of the Can­ton of Bern or the su­preme court of the can­ton where the plaintiff's dom­i­cile, re­gistered of­fice or ha­bitu­al res­id­ence is loc­ated;
d.
for ac­tions against a can­ton: a court in the can­ton's cap­it­al.

2 Dom­i­cile is de­term­ined in ac­cord­ance with the Civil Code (CC)29. Art­icle 24 CC does not ap­ply.

28 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

29 SR 210

Art. 11 Residence

1 If the de­fend­ant has no dom­i­cile, the court at his or her ha­bitu­al res­id­ence has jur­is­dic­tion.

2 A ha­bitu­al res­id­ence is the place where a per­son lives for a cer­tain peri­od of time, even if that peri­od is lim­ited from the out­set.

3 If the de­fend­ant has no ha­bitu­al res­id­ence, the court at his or her last known place of res­id­ence has jur­is­dic­tion.

Art. 12 Establishment

For ac­tions arising out of the com­mer­cial or pro­fes­sion­al activ­ity of an es­tab­lish­ment or branch, the court at the de­fend­ant's dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice or at the loc­a­tion of the es­tab­lish­ment has jur­is­dic­tion.

Art. 13 Interim measures

Un­less the law provides oth­er­wise, the fol­low­ing court has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion to or­der in­ter­im meas­ures:

a.
the court that has jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide the main ac­tion; or
b.
the court at the place where the meas­ure is to be en­forced.

Art. 14 Counterclaim

1 A coun­ter­claim may be filed in the court that has jur­is­dic­tion over the main ac­tion, provided the coun­ter­claim has a fac­tu­al con­nec­tion with the main ac­tion.

2 This place of jur­is­dic­tion sub­sists even if the main ac­tion is dis­missed for whatever reas­on.

Art. 15 Joinder of parties and joinder of actions

1 If an ac­tion is dir­ec­ted against two or more de­fend­ants, the court that has jur­is­dic­tion with re­gard to one de­fend­ant has jur­is­dic­tion with re­gard to all de­fend­ants un­less jur­is­dic­tion is based solely on an agree­ment on jur­is­dic­tion.

2 If two or more ac­tions that are fac­tu­al con­nec­ted are raised against one and the same de­fend­ant, each court that has jur­is­dic­tion over any one of the ac­tions has jur­is­dic­tion over all of them.

Art. 16 Third party action

The court that has jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide the main ac­tion also de­cides on the third-party ac­tion.

Art. 17 Agreement on jurisdiction

1 Un­less the law provides oth­er­wise, the parties may agree on which court has jur­is­dic­tion over an ex­ist­ing or fu­ture dis­pute arising from a par­tic­u­lar leg­al re­la­tion­ship. Un­less the agree­ment provides oth­er­wise, the ac­tion may only be brought be­fore agreed court.

2 The agree­ment must be in writ­ing or in any oth­er form al­low­ing it to be evid­enced by text.

Art. 18 Acceptance by appearance

Un­less the law provides oth­er­wise, the seised court has jur­is­dic­tion if the de­fend­ant enters an ap­pear­ance on the mer­its without ob­ject­ing to the court's jur­is­dic­tion.

Art. 19 Non-contentious matters

Un­less the law provides oth­er­wise, the court or au­thor­ity at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of the ap­plic­ant has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion over non-con­ten­tious mat­ters.

Section 2 Law of Persons

Art. 20 Protection of personal privacy and data protection

The court at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of either of the parties has jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide on:

a.
ac­tions based on an in­va­sion of the per­son­al pri­vacy;
b.
re­quests for a right of reply;
c.
ac­tions for name pro­tec­tion and ac­tions chal­len­ging a name change;
d.30
ac­tions and re­quests un­der the Data Pro­tec­tion Act of 25 Septem­ber 202031 (FADP).

30 Amended by An­nex 1 No II 24 of the Data Pro­tec­tion Act of 25 Sept. 2020, in force since 1 Sept. 2023 (AS 2022 491; BBl 2017 6941).

31 SR 235.1

Art. 21 Declaration of death and declaration of presumed death

The court at the last known dom­i­cile of the miss­ing per­son has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion over ap­plic­a­tions re­lat­ing to a de­clar­a­tion of death or de­clar­a­tion of pre­sumed death (Art. 34 to 38 CC32).

Art. 22 Modification of the civil register

For ac­tions con­cern­ing the modi­fic­a­tion of the civil re­gister, the court of the dis­trict in which the entry to be mod­i­fied was made or should have been made has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion.

Section 3 Family Law

Art. 23 Applications and actions based on marital law

1 The court at the dom­i­cile of either of the parties has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion over ap­plic­a­tions and ac­tions based on mar­it­al law as well as ap­plic­a­tions for in­ter­im meas­ures.

2 The court at the dom­i­cile of the debt­or has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion over ap­plic­a­tions for sep­ar­a­tion of prop­erty by the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity in debt en­force­ment and bank­ruptcy mat­ters.

Art. 24 Applications and actions in registered partnership matters

The court at the dom­i­cile of one of the parties has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion over ap­plic­a­tions and ac­tions in mat­ters of re­gistered part­ner­ships as well as re­quests for in­ter­im meas­ures.

Art. 25 Actions relating to parent-child relationships

The court at the dom­i­cile of one of the parties has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion over ac­tions to de­clare or con­test a par­ent-child re­la­tion­ship.

Art. 26 Actions for maintenance and assistance

The court at the dom­i­cile of either of the parties has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion over sep­ar­ate ac­tions claim­ing main­ten­ance brought by chil­dren against their par­ents or for ac­tions against re­l­at­ives with an ob­lig­a­tion to provide as­sist­ance.

Art. 27 Claims of the unmarried mother

The court at the dom­i­cile of either of the parties has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion over the claims of the un­mar­ried moth­er.

Section 4 Law of Succession

Art. 28

1 The court at the last dom­i­cile of the de­ceased has jur­is­dic­tion over ac­tions un­der the law of suc­ces­sion as well as ac­tions for the di­vi­sion of the mar­it­al prop­erty on the death of a spouse or a re­gistered part­ner.

2 The au­thor­it­ies at the last dom­i­cile of the de­ceased have man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion over meas­ures in con­nec­tion with suc­ces­sion. If death did not oc­cur at the dom­i­cile, the au­thor­it­ies at the place of death shall no­ti­fy the au­thor­it­ies at the place of dom­i­cile and take the ne­ces­sary meas­ures to en­sure the con­ser­va­tion of the as­sets situ­ated at the place of death.

3 In­de­pend­ent ac­tions for the al­loc­a­tion on death of an ag­ri­cul­tur­al en­ter­prise or ag­ri­cul­tur­al land may also be brought be­fore the court at the place where the prop­erty is loc­ated.

Section 5 Property Law

Art. 29 Immovable property

1 The court at the place where a prop­erty is or should be re­cor­ded in the land re­gister has jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide on:

a.
ac­tions in rem;
b.
ac­tions against the com­munity of con­domin­i­um own­ers;
c.
ac­tions for the re­gis­tra­tion of stat­utory charges on im­mov­able prop­erty.

2 Oth­er ac­tions re­lat­ing to im­mov­able prop­erty rights may also be brought be­fore the court at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of the de­fend­ant.

3 If an ac­tion con­cerns mul­tiple prop­er­ties or if a prop­erty is re­cor­ded in the land re­gister of sev­er­al dis­tricts, the court where the largest prop­erty or the largest part of the prop­erty is situ­ated has jur­is­dic­tion.

4 In non-con­ten­tious mat­ters re­lat­ing to im­mov­able prop­erty rights, the court at the place where the prop­erty is or should be re­cor­ded in the land re­gister has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion.

Art. 30 Chattels

1 For ac­tions re­lat­ing to rights in rem or pos­ses­sion of chat­tels or claims se­cured by charges on chat­tels, the court at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of the de­fend­ant or at the place where the item is loc­ated has jur­is­dic­tion.

2 In non-con­ten­tious mat­ters, the court at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of the ap­plic­ant or with the court at the place where the item is loc­ated has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion.

Section 6 Actions in Contract

Art. 31 Principle

The court at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of the de­fend­ant or at the place where the char­ac­ter­ist­ic per­form­ance must be rendered has jur­is­dic­tion over ac­tions re­lated to con­tracts.

Art. 32 Consumer contracts

1 The fol­low­ing court has jur­is­dic­tion in dis­putes con­cern­ing con­sumer con­tracts:

a.
for ac­tions brought by the con­sumer: the court at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of one of the parties;
b.
for ac­tions brought by the sup­pli­er: the court at the dom­i­cile of the de­fend­ant.

2 Con­sumer con­tracts are con­tracts on sup­plies for or­din­ary con­sump­tion in­ten­ded for the per­son­al use of the con­sumer or his fam­ily and offered by the oth­er party in the course of its pro­fes­sion­al or com­mer­cial activ­ity.

Art. 33 Tenancy and lease of immovable property

The court at the place where the im­mov­able prop­erty is situ­ated has jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide ac­tions based on a con­tract for the ten­ancy or lease of im­mov­able prop­erty.

Art. 34 Employment Law

1 The court at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of the de­fend­ant or where the em­ploy­ee nor­mally car­ries out his or her work has jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide ac­tions re­lat­ing to em­ploy­ment law.

2 If a job ap­plic­ant or an em­ploy­ee brings an ac­tion based on the Re­cruit­ment Act of 6 Oc­to­ber 198933, the court at the place of the busi­ness es­tab­lish­ment of the re­cruit­ment or hir­ing agent with whom the con­tract was con­cluded also has jur­is­dic­tion.

Art. 35 Waiver of statutory jurisdiction

1 The fol­low­ing per­sons may not waive the jur­is­dic­tion provided for in Art­icles 32 to 34, wheth­er in by ad­vance agree­ment or by en­ter­ing ap­pear­ance:

a.
the con­sumer;
b.
the ten­ant or less­ee of a res­id­en­tial or busi­ness prop­erty;
c.
the farm­er in case of ag­ri­cul­tur­al farm leases;
d.
the per­son seek­ing em­ploy­ment or the em­ploy­ee.

2 The con­clu­sion of an agree­ment on jur­is­dic­tion after the emer­gence of the dis­pute is re­served.

Section 7 Actions in Tort

Art. 36 Principle

The court at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of the ag­grieved per­son or the de­fend­ant, or where the act oc­curred or had its ef­fect has jur­is­dic­tion over ac­tions in tort.

Art. 37 Damages for unjustified interim measures

The court at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of the de­fend­ant or at the place where the meas­ures have been ordered has jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide ac­tions for dam­ages res­ult­ing from un­jus­ti­fied in­ter­im meas­ures.

Art. 38 Motor vehicle and bicycle accidents

1 The court at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of the de­fend­ant or at the place of the ac­ci­dent has jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide ac­tions res­ult­ing from mo­tor vehicle and bi­cycle ac­ci­dents.

2 Ac­tions against the Swiss Na­tion­al Bur­eau of In­sur­ance (Art. 74 of the Road Traffic Act of 19 Decem­ber 195834; RTA) or against the Swiss Na­tion­al Guar­an­tee Fund (Art. 76 RTA) may also be brought be­fore the court at the place of any branch of such in­sti­tu­tions.

Art. 38a Nuclear damage 35

1 In the case of ac­tions arising from nuc­le­ar in­cid­ents, the court in the can­ton where the in­cid­ent took place has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion.

2 If there is any un­cer­tainty as to which can­ton this is, the court in the can­ton where the nuc­le­ar in­stall­a­tion of the li­able pro­pri­et­or is loc­ated has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion.

3 If two or more courts have jur­is­dic­tion in ac­cord­ance with these rules, the court in the can­ton that is most closely linked to the in­cid­ent and which is most ser­i­ously af­fected by it has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion.

35 In­ser­ted by An­nex 2 No 1, in force since 1 Jan. 2022 (AS 2010 1739; BBl 2006 7221; AS 2022 43; BBl 2007 5397).

Art. 39 Incidental civil claim

The com­pet­ence of the crim­in­al court to de­cide in­cid­ent­al civil ac­tions is re­served.

Section 8 Commercial Law

Art. 40 Company law and the commercial register 36

1 The court at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of the de­fend­ant or the court at the re­gistered of­fice of the com­pany has jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide ac­tions con­cern­ing li­ab­il­ity in com­pany law.

2 The court at the last re­gistered of­fice of the de­leted leg­al en­tity has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion over the re­in­state­ment of a de­leted leg­al en­tity in the com­mer­cial re­gister.37

36 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 17 March 2017 (Com­mer­cial Re­gister Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 957; BBl 2015 3617).

37 In­ser­ted by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 17 March 2017 (Com­mer­cial Re­gister Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 957; BBl 2015 3617).

Art. 4138

38 Re­pealed by No II 1 of the FA of 28 Sept. 2012, with ef­fect from 1 May 2013 (AS 2013 1103; BBl 2011 6875).

Art. 42 Mergers, demergers, transformations, transfers of assets and liabilities

The court at the re­gistered of­fice of one of the in­volved en­tit­ies has jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide ac­tions re­lat­ing to the Mer­gers Act of 3 Oc­to­ber 200339.

Art. 43 Cancellation of securities and insurance policies, injunction against payment

1 The court at the re­gistered of­fice of the com­pany has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion to de­clare the can­cel­la­tion of shares.

2 The court at the place where the im­mov­able prop­erty is re­cor­ded in the land re­gister has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion to de­clare the can­cel­la­tion of mort­gage in­stru­ments.

3 The court at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of the debt­or has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion to de­clare the can­cel­la­tion of oth­er se­cur­it­ies and in­sur­ance policies.

4 The court at the place of pay­ment has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion to is­sue in­junc­tions against pay­ment un­der a bill of ex­change or cheque and to de­clare their can­cel­la­tion.

Art. 44 Bonds

The place of jur­is­dic­tion for the au­thor­isa­tion to con­vene a cred­it­ors' meet­ing is gov­erned by Art­icle 1165 CO40.

Art. 45 Collective investment schemes

The court at the re­gistered of­fice of the con­cerned li­cence hold­er has man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide on ac­tions brought by the in­vestors or the rep­res­ent­at­ive of the com­munity of in­vestors.

Section 9 Debt Enforcement and Bankruptcy Law

Art. 46

The place of jur­is­dic­tion for ac­tions un­der the Fed­er­al Act of 11 April 188941 on Debt En­force­ment and Bank­ruptcy (DEBA) is de­term­ined by this chapter un­less the DEBA provides for a place of jur­is­dic­tion.

Chapter 3 Recusal

Art. 47 Grounds for recusal

1 Judges and ju­di­cial of­ficers shall re­cuse them­selves if:

a.
they have a per­son­al in­terest in the case;
b.
they have ac­ted in the same case in an­oth­er ca­pa­city, in par­tic­u­lar as mem­ber of an au­thor­ity, leg­al agent, ex­pert wit­ness, wit­ness or me­di­at­or;
c.
they are or were mar­ried to, or live or lived in a re­gistered part­ner­ship or co-habit with a party or his or her rep­res­ent­at­ive or a per­son who has ac­ted in the same case as a mem­ber of the lower court;
d.
they are re­lated to a party by birth or mar­riage in dir­ect line or in col­lat­er­al line up to the third de­gree;
e.
they are re­lated by birth or mar­riage in dir­ect line or in col­lat­er­al line up to the second de­gree to the rep­res­ent­at­ive of a party or a per­son who has ac­ted in the same case as a mem­ber of the lower court;
f.
they may not be im­par­tial for oth­er reas­ons, not­ably due to friend­ship or enmity with a party or his or her rep­res­ent­at­ive.

2 In­volve­ment in the fol­low­ing, in par­tic­u­lar, is in it­self no reas­on for re­cus­al:

a.
the de­cision on leg­al aid;
b.
the con­cili­ation pro­ceed­ings;
c.
the set­ting aside of an ob­jec­tion un­der Art­icles 80 to 84 DEBA42;
d.
the or­der­ing of in­ter­im meas­ures;
e.
pro­ceed­ings for pro­tec­tion of the mar­it­al uni­on.

Art. 48 Duty to provide information

The judge or ju­di­cial of­ficer con­cerned shall make a timely dis­clos­ure of any pos­sible reas­on for re­cus­al and shall re­cuse him- or her­self vol­un­tar­ily if he or she con­siders that such reas­on ex­ists.

Art. 49 Application for recusal

1 A party that wishes to chal­lenge a judge or ju­di­cial of­ficer must file the cor­res­pond­ing ap­plic­a­tion as soon as it has be­come aware of the reas­on for re­cus­al. It must show cred­ibly the facts that jus­ti­fy the chal­lenge.

2 The judge or ju­di­cial of­ficer con­cerned shall re­spond to the ap­plic­a­tion.

Art. 50 Decision

1 If the reas­on giv­en for re­cus­al is dis­puted, the court shall de­cide.

2 An ob­jec­tion may be filed against the de­cision.

Art. 51 Consequences of violating the regulations on recusal

1 Pro­ced­ur­al acts in which a per­son ob­liged to re­cuse him- or her­self has par­ti­cip­ated must be an­nulled and re­peated if a party so re­quests with­in 10 days of be­com­ing aware of the reas­on for re­cus­al.

2 If the tak­ing of evid­ence can­not be re­peated, the rel­ev­ant evid­ence may be taken in­to con­sid­er­a­tion by the de­cid­ing court.

3 If a reas­on for re­cus­al is de­tec­ted only after the close of the pro­ceed­ings and if no oth­er leg­al rem­edy is still avail­able, the pro­vi­sions on re­view ap­ply.43

43 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Title 3 Procedural Principles and Procedural Requirements

Chapter 1 Procedural Principles

Art. 52 Acting in good faith

1 All those who par­ti­cip­ate in pro­ceed­ings must act in good faith.

2In­cor­rect in­struc­tions on ap­pel­late rem­ed­ies are ef­fect­ive in re­la­tion to all courts to the ex­tent that they are ad­vant­age­ous to the party in­vok­ing them.44

44 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 53 Right to be heard

1 The parties have the right to be heard.

2 They have in par­tic­u­lar the right to con­sult the case files and to ob­tain cop­ies there­of provided this does not con­flict with over­rid­ing pub­lic or private in­terests.

3 They may com­ment on all sub­mis­sions made by the op­pos­ing party. The court shall set them a dead­line of at least ten days to do so. If the dead­line ex­pires un­used, it shall be as­sumed that the parties do not wish to com­ment.45

45 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 54 Publicity

1 Hear­ings and any or­al passing of judg­ment shall be con­duc­ted in pub­lic. The de­cisions are made ac­cess­ible to the pub­lic.

2 Can­ton­al law de­term­ines wheth­er the de­lib­er­a­tions are pub­lic.

3 Pro­ceed­ings may be held com­pletely or par­tially in cam­era when re­quired by pub­lic in­terest or by the le­git­im­ate in­terests of a per­son in­volved.

4 Fam­ily law pro­ceed­ings are not con­duc­ted in pub­lic.

Art. 55 Principles of production of evidence and of ex-officio investigation

1 The parties must present the court with the facts in sup­port of their case and sub­mit the re­lated evid­ence.

2 Stat­utory pro­vi­sions re­lat­ing to the ex-of­fi­cio es­tab­lish­ment of facts and tak­ing of evid­ence are re­served.

Art. 56 Court's duty to enquire

If a party's sub­mis­sions are un­clear, con­tra­dict­ory, am­bigu­ous or mani­festly in­com­plete, and the court shall give the party the op­por­tun­ity to cla­ri­fy or com­plete the sub­mis­sion by ask­ing ap­pro­pri­ate ques­tions.

Art. 57 Ex-officio application of the law

The court ap­plies the law ex-of­fi­cio.

Art. 58 Principles of non ultra petita and ex-officio assessment

1 The court may not award a party any­thing more than or dif­fer­ent from what the party has re­ques­ted, nor less than what the op­pos­ing party has ac­know­ledged.

2 The stat­utory pro­vi­sions un­der which the court is not bound by the parties' re­quests are re­served.

Chapter 2 Procedural Requirements

Art. 59 Principle

1 The court shall con­sider an ac­tion or ap­plic­a­tion provided the pro­ced­ur­al re­quire­ments are sat­is­fied.

2 Pro­ced­ur­al re­quire­ments are in par­tic­u­lar the fol­low­ing:

a.
the plaintiff or ap­plic­ant has a le­git­im­ate in­terest;
b.
the court has sub­ject mat­ter and ter­rit­ori­al jur­is­dic­tion;
c.
the parties have the ca­pa­city to be a party and the ca­pa­city to take leg­al ac­tion;
d.
the case is not the sub­ject of pending pro­ceed­ings else­where;
e.
the case is not already the sub­ject of a leg­ally-bind­ing de­cision;
f.
the ad­vance and se­cur­ity for costs have been paid.

Art. 60 Verification of compliance with the procedural requirements

The court shall ex­am­ine ex-of­fi­cio wheth­er the pro­ced­ur­al re­quire­ments are sat­is­fied.

Art. 61 Arbitration agreement

If the parties have con­cluded an ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment re­lat­ing to an ar­bit­rable dis­pute, the seised court shall de­clines jur­is­dic­tion un­less:

a.
the de­fend­ant has made an ap­pear­ance without re­ser­va­tion;
b.
the court holds that the ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment is mani­festly in­val­id or un­en­force­able; or
c.
the ar­bit­ral tribunal can­not be con­sti­tuted for reas­ons that are mani­festly at­trib­ut­able to the de­fend­ant in the ar­bit­ra­tion pro­ceed­ings.

Title 4 Pendency and Effects of Withdrawal of the Action

Art. 62 Start of pendency

1 A case be­comes pending when an ap­plic­a­tion for con­cili­ation, an ac­tion, an ap­plic­a­tion, or a joint re­quest for di­vorce is filed.

2 Con­firm­a­tion of re­ceipt of such sub­mis­sions shall be is­sued to the parties.

Art. 63 Pendency where the court has no jurisdiction or the procedure is incorrect

1 If a sub­mis­sion that has been with­drawn or re­jec­ted due to lack of jur­is­dic­tion is filed again with the com­pet­ent con­cili­ation au­thor­ity or court with­in one month of with­draw­al or the de­clar­a­tion of non-ad­miss­ib­il­ity, or if it is for­war­ded in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 143 para­graph 1bis, the date of the first fil­ing is deemed to be the date of pen­dency.46

2 The same ap­plies if the claim was not filed un­der the prop­er pro­ced­ure.

3 The spe­cial stat­utory dead­lines for fil­ing ac­tions un­der the DEBA47 are re­served.

46 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

47 SR 281.1

Art. 64 Effects of pendency

1 The pen­dency of an ac­tion has in par­tic­u­lar the fol­low­ing ef­fects:

a
the sub­ject mat­ter of the dis­pute may not be made pending else­where between the same parties;
b.
the ter­rit­ori­al jur­is­dic­tion of the court is main­tained.

2 When com­pli­ance with stat­utory dead­line un­der private law de­pends on the date of the state­ment of claim, of rais­ing an ac­tion or of an­oth­er act ini­ti­at­ing leg­al pro­ceed­ings, the rel­ev­ant mo­ment is that of pen­dency in ac­cord­ance with this Code.

Art. 65 Effects of withdrawal

Any per­son who with­draws an ac­tion be­fore the com­pet­ent court may not bring pro­ceed­ings again against the same party on the same sub­ject mat­ter if the court has already served the state­ment of claim on the de­fend­ant and the de­fend­ant does not con­sent to its with­draw­al.

Title 5 Parties and Participation of Third Parties

Chapter 1 Capacity to be a Party and Capacity to take Legal Action

Art. 66 Capacity to be a party

The ca­pa­city to be a party is sub­ject to leg­al ca­pa­city or the qual­i­fic­a­tion as a party by vir­tue of fed­er­al law.

Art. 67 Capacity to take legal action

1 Any per­son who has the ca­pa­city to act has the ca­pa­city to take leg­al ac­tion.

2 A per­son without ca­pa­city to act may act through his leg­al rep­res­ent­at­ive.

3 Provided a per­son without the ca­pa­city to act has the ca­pa­city to con­sent, he or she may:

a.
in­de­pend­ently ex­er­cise those rights con­ferred by vir­tue of his or her per­son­al­ity;
b.
tem­por­ar­ily take the acts ne­ces­sary in cases of im­min­ent danger.

Chapter 2 Representation of the Parties

Art. 68 Representation by agreement

1 Any per­son who has ca­pa­city to take leg­al ac­tion may choose to be rep­res­en­ted in pro­ceed­ings.

2 The fol­low­ing per­sons are al­lowed to act as pro­fes­sion­al rep­res­ent­at­ives:

a.
in all pro­ceed­ings: law­yers ad­mit­ted to rep­res­ent parties be­fore Swiss courts un­der the Law­yers Act of 23 June 200048;
b.
be­fore the con­cili­ation au­thor­it­ies, in fin­an­cial dis­putes un­der the sim­pli­fied pro­ced­ure and in cases un­der the sum­mary pro­ced­ure: li­censed ad­min­is­trat­ors and leg­al agents if provided for by can­ton­al law;
c.
in cases un­der the sum­mary pro­ced­ure in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 251 of this Code: pro­fes­sion­al rep­res­ent­at­ives un­der Art­icle 27 DEBA49;
d.
be­fore the spe­cial courts for ten­ancy mat­ters and for em­ploy­ment mat­ters: pro­fes­sion­ally qual­i­fied rep­res­ent­at­ives if provided for by can­ton­al law.

3 The rep­res­ent­at­ive must prove his or her au­thor­ity by power of at­tor­ney.

4 The court may or­der the per­son­al ap­pear­ance of a rep­res­en­ted party.

Art. 69 Inability to appear

1 If a party is mani­festly un­able to ap­pear, the court may in­vite that party to ap­point a rep­res­ent­at­ive. If the party does not com­ply with­in the set dead­line, a rep­res­ent­at­ive shall be ap­poin­ted by the court.

2 The court shall no­ti­fy the Adult and Child Pro­tec­tion Au­thor­ity if pro­tect­ive meas­ures are deemed ne­ces­sary.50

50 Amended by An­nex 2 No 3 of the FA of 19 Dec. 2008, in force since 1 Jan. 2013 (AS 2010 1739, 2011 725; BBl 2006 72217001).

Chapter 3 Joinder of Parties

Art. 70 Mandatory joinder

1 If two or more per­sons are in a leg­al re­la­tion­ship that calls for one single de­cision with ef­fect for all of them, they must jointly ap­pear as plaintiffs or be sued as joint de­fend­ants.

2 Pro­ced­ur­al acts duly car­ried out by one of the joint parties are like­wise ef­fect­ive for the oth­ers, with the ex­cep­tion of chal­len­ging a de­cision.

Art. 71 Voluntary joinder 51

1 Two or more per­sons may jointly ap­pear as plaintiffs or be sued as joint de­fend­ants provided:

a.
rights and du­ties res­ult­ing from sim­il­ar cir­cum­stances or leg­al grounds are to be as­sessed;
b.
the in­di­vidu­al cases are not sub­ject to dif­fer­ent types of pro­ced­ure; and
c.
the same court has ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion.

2 Each of the joint parties may pro­ceed in­de­pend­ently from the oth­ers.

51 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 72 Joint representation

The joint parties may ap­point a joint rep­res­ent­at­ive, fail­ing which ser­vice is made to each party in­di­vidu­ally.

Chapter 4 Third Party Intervention

Section 1 Principal Intervention

Art. 73

1 Any per­son who claims to have a bet­ter right in the ob­ject of a dis­pute, to the total or par­tial ex­clu­sion of both parties, may bring a claim dir­ectly against both parties in the court in which the dis­pute is pending in first in­stance.

2 The court may either sus­pend the pro­ceed­ings un­til the case of the prin­cip­al in­ter­ven­or is fi­nally con­cluded, or join the two cases.

Section 2 Accessory Intervention

Art. 74 Principle

Any per­son who shows a cred­ible leg­al in­terest in hav­ing a pending dis­pute de­cided in fa­vour of one of the parties may in­ter­vene at any time as an ac­cess­ory party and for this pur­pose sub­mit to the court an in­ter­ven­tion ap­plic­a­tion.

Art. 75 Application

1 The ap­plic­a­tion for in­ter­ven­tion shall in­dic­ate the reas­ons for in­ter­ven­tion and the party in whose fa­vour the in­ter­ven­tion is made.

2 The court de­cides on the ap­plic­a­tion after hear­ing the parties. An ob­jec­tion may be filed against the de­cision.

Art. 76 Rights of the Intervenor

1 The in­ter­ven­or may carry out any pro­ced­ur­al acts in sup­port of the prin­cip­al party, provided they are per­mit­ted at the rel­ev­ant stage of the pro­ceed­ings; he or she may in par­tic­u­lar make use of any of­fens­ive or de­fens­ive meas­ures and also seek ap­pel­late rem­ed­ies.

2 The pro­ced­ur­al acts of the in­ter­ven­or shall not be taken in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in the pro­ceed­ings if they are con­tra­dict­ory to those of the prin­cip­al party.

Art. 77 Effect of intervention

A res­ult that is un­fa­vour­able to the prin­cip­al party is ef­fect­ive against the in­ter­ven­or, un­less:

a.
the state of the pro­ceed­ings at the mo­ment of in­ter­ven­tion or the acts or omis­sions of the prin­cip­al party have pre­ven­ted the in­ter­ven­or from mak­ing use of of­fens­ive or de­fens­ive meas­ures; or
b.
the prin­cip­al party has failed, wil­fully or through gross neg­li­gence, to make use of of­fens­ive or de­fens­ive meas­ures of which the in­ter­ven­or was not aware.

Chapter 5 Third-Party Notice and Third-Party Action

Section 1 Third-Party Notice

Art. 78 Principles

1 A party may no­ti­fy a third party of the dis­pute if, in the event of be­ing un­suc­cess­ful, he or she might take re­course against or be sub­ject to re­course by a third party.

2 The no­ti­fied third party may also give no­tice of the dis­pute.

Art. 79 Standing of the third party

1 The no­ti­fied third party may:

a.
in­ter­vene in fa­vour of the no­ti­fy­ing prin­cip­al party, without fur­ther con­di­tions; or
b.
pro­ceed in place of the no­ti­fy­ing prin­cip­al party, with the con­sent of the lat­ter.

2 If the no­ti­fied third party re­fuses to in­ter­vene or does not an­swer the no­ti­fic­a­tion, the pro­ceed­ings shall con­tin­ue without con­sid­er­ing the third party.

Art. 80 Effects of notice

Art­icle 77 ap­plies by ana­logy.

Section 2 Third-Party Action

Art. 81 Principles

1 The no­ti­fy­ing party may as­sert the rights that he or she be­lieves, in the event that he or she is un­suc­cess­ful, he or she will have against the no­ti­fied party in­sti­tut­ing the dis­pute or that it fears the no­ti­fied party may have against it be­fore the court hear­ing the main ac­tion, provided that:

a.
the claims are fac­tu­ally re­lated to the main ac­tion;
b.
the court has ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion; and
c.
the main ac­tion and the claims are to be as­sessed in or­din­ary pro­ceed­ings.52

2 The no­ti­fied third party may not bring a fur­ther third-party ac­tion.

353

52 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

53 Re­pealed by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), with ef­fect from 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 82 Procedure

1 The re­quest for the third-party ac­tion to be ad­mit­ted must be made with the an­swers or the reply in the main pro­ceed­ings. The no­ti­fy­ing party shall set out the pray­ers to be raised against the third party to­geth­er with a brief state­ment of the grounds. They shall not be quan­ti­fied if they re­late to the same con­trac­tu­al per­form­ance to which the no­ti­fied party is ob­liged in the main pro­ceed­ings.54

2 The court shall give the op­pos­ing party and the third party the op­por­tun­ity to re­spond.

3 If the third-party ac­tion is ad­mit­ted, the court shall de­term­ine the time and ex­tent of the re­lated ex­change of writ­ten sub­mis­sions, sub­ject to Art­icle 125.

4 An ob­jec­tion may be filed against the de­cision to ad­mit the third-party ac­tion.

54 Third sen­tence in­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Chapter 6 Substitution of a Party

Art. 83

1 If the ob­ject in dis­pute is ali­en­ated in the course of the pro­ceed­ings, the ac­quirer may take up the pro­ceed­ings in place of the ali­en­at­ing party.

2 The sub­sti­tute party is li­able for the en­tire costs of the pro­ceed­ings. The re­tir­ing party is jointly and sev­er­ally li­able for the costs in­curred un­til the sub­sti­tu­tion.

3 In jus­ti­fied cases, the sub­sti­tut­ing party must, if so re­ques­ted by the op­pos­ing party, provide se­cur­ity to guar­an­tee the en­force­ment of the de­cision.

4 In the ab­sence of ali­en­a­tion of the ob­ject in dis­pute, the sub­sti­tu­tion of a party is per­mit­ted only with the con­sent of the op­pos­ing party; spe­cial leg­al pro­vi­sions on the leg­al suc­ces­sion are re­served.

Title 6 Actions

Art. 84 Action for performance

1 By fil­ing an ac­tion for per­form­ance, the plaintiff de­mands that the de­fend­ant be ordered to do, re­frain from do­ing or tol­er­ate something.

2 In an ac­tion for the pay­ment of money, the amount must be spe­cified.

Art. 85 Action for an unquantified debt

1 If it is im­possible or un­reas­on­able to quanti­fy the amount of the debt at the start of the pro­ceed­ings, the plaintiff may bring an ac­tion for an un­quan­ti­fied debt. However, the plaintiff must in­dic­ate a min­im­al amount as a pro­vi­sion­al value in dis­pute.

2 Once evid­ence is taken or the re­quired in­form­a­tion fur­nished by the parties or third parties, the court shall set a dead­line for the parties to quanti­fy their claim.55 The seised court main­tains com­pet­ence even if the value in dis­pute ex­ceeds its ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion.

55 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 86 Partial action

If a claim is di­vis­ible, an ac­tion for part of the claim may be brought.

Art. 87 Action to modify a legal relationship

By fil­ing an ac­tion to modi­fy a leg­al re­la­tion­ship, the plaintiff de­mands the cre­ation, modi­fic­a­tion or dis­sol­u­tion of a spe­cif­ic right or leg­al re­la­tion­ship.

Art. 88 Action for a declaratory judgment

By fil­ing an ac­tion for a de­clar­at­ory judg­ment, the plaintiff de­mands that the court es­tab­lish that a right or leg­al re­la­tion­ship ex­ists or does not ex­ist.

Art. 89 Group action

1 As­so­ci­ations and oth­er or­gan­isa­tions of na­tion­al or re­gion­al im­port­ance that are au­thor­ised by their art­icles of as­so­ci­ation to pro­tect the in­terests of a cer­tain group of in­di­vidu­als may bring an ac­tion in their own name for a vi­ol­a­tion of the per­son­al­ity of the mem­bers of such group.

2 They may re­quest the court:

a.
to pro­hib­it an im­min­ent vi­ol­a­tion;
b.
to put an end to an on­go­ing vi­ol­a­tion;
c.
to es­tab­lish the un­law­ful char­ac­ter of a vi­ol­a­tion if the lat­ter con­tin­ues to have a dis­turb­ing ef­fect.

3 Spe­cial leg­al pro­vi­sions on group ac­tions are re­served.

Art. 90 Combination of actions

1 The plaintiff may com­bine two or more claims against the same party in one ac­tion, if:

a.
they are with­in the ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion of the same court; and
b.
they are sub­ject to the same type of pro­ced­ure.

2 The com­bin­a­tion of ac­tions is also per­mit­ted if a dif­fer­ence in ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion or type of pro­ceed­ings is based solely on the value in dis­pute. If dif­fer­ent types of pro­ceed­ings ap­ply to the in­di­vidu­al claims, they shall be as­sessed to­geth­er in the or­din­ary pro­ceed­ings.56

56 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Title 7 Value in Dispute

Art. 91 Principle

1 The value in dis­pute is de­term­ined by the pray­ers for re­lief. In­terest, costs of the on­go­ing pro­ceed­ings or a pos­sible pub­lic­a­tion of the de­cision and the value of pos­sible sub­si­di­ary claims are not taken in­to ac­count.

2 If the pray­ers for re­lief do not spe­cify a sum of money, the court shall de­term­ine the value in dis­pute if the parties are un­able to reach an agree­ment or if the in­form­a­tion they provide is mani­festly in­cor­rect.

Art. 92 Recurring usage or services

1 Re­cur­ring us­age or ser­vices have the value of the cap­it­al they rep­res­ent.

2 If the dur­a­tion of the re­cur­ring us­age or ser­vices is un­known or in­def­in­ite, the an­nu­al us­age or ser­vices mul­ti­plied by twenty is deemed to be the value of the cap­it­al; in case of a life an­nu­ity, the amount of the cap­it­al cor­res­ponds to the ac­tu­al cash value.

Art. 93 Joinder of parties and joinder of actions

1 In the event of the vol­un­tary join­der of parties or join­der of ac­tions, the val­ues of the claims are ad­ded to­geth­er in­so­far as they are not mu­tu­ally ex­clus­ive.

2 In case of per­missive join­der of parties, the type of pro­ced­ure for each claim is main­tained des­pite the ad­di­tion of their val­ues.

Art. 94 Counterclaim

1 In the case of an ac­tion and coun­ter­claim, the value in dis­pute is de­term­ined by the ac­tion with the high­er value.

2 For the pur­pose of de­term­in­ing the costs, the val­ues of the ac­tion and the coun­ter­claim are ad­ded to­geth­er in­so­far as they are not mu­tu­ally ex­clus­ive.

3 If the main ac­tion is a par­tial ac­tion, the leg­al costs are cal­cu­lated solely on the basis of the value in dis­pute in the main ac­tion.57

57 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 94a Group action 58

In the case of a group ac­tion, if the parties are un­able to agree on the value in dis­pute, or if the value they put for­ward is ob­vi­ously in­cor­rect, the court shall de­term­ine the value in dis­pute in ac­cord­ance with the in­terests of the in­di­vidu­al mem­bers of the group of per­sons con­cerned and the im­port­ance of the case.

58 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Title 8 Costs and Legal Aid

Chapter 1 Procedural Costs

Art. 95 Definitions

1 The pro­ced­ur­al costs are:

a.
the court costs;
b.
the party costs.

2 The court costs are:

a.
the fee for the con­cili­ation pro­ceed­ings;
b.
the fee for the de­cision (judg­ment fee);
c.
the costs of tak­ing evid­ence;
d.
the costs of trans­la­tion;
e.
the costs of rep­res­ent­a­tion for a child (Art. 299 and 300).

3 The party costs are:

a.
the re­im­burse­ment of ne­ces­sary out­lays;
b.
the costs of pro­fes­sion­al rep­res­ent­a­tion;
c.
in jus­ti­fied cases: reas­on­able com­pens­a­tion for per­son­al ex­penses if a party is not pro­fes­sion­ally rep­res­en­ted.

Art. 96 Tariffs and right of representatives to party costs 59

1 The can­tons set the tar­iffs for the pro­ced­ur­al costs. The fee reg­u­la­tions pur­su­ant to Art­icle 16 para­graph 1 DEBA re­main re­served60.

2 The can­tons may provide that the law­yer has an ex­clus­ive claim to the fees and ex­penses awar­ded as party costs.

59 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

60 SR 281.1

Art. 97 Advice on procedural costs

The court shall ad­vise a party without leg­al rep­res­ent­a­tion on the costs to be ex­pec­ted and on leg­al aid.

Art. 98 Advance payment of costs 61

1 The court or the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity may de­mand that the plaintiff make an ad­vance pay­ment not ex­ceed­ing one half of the ex­pec­ted court costs.

2 It may re­quest an ad­vance pay­ment not ex­ceed­ing the total es­tim­ated court costs in the fol­low­ing cases:

a.
pro­ceed­ings un­der Art­icle 6 para­graph 4 let­ter c and Art­icle 8;
b.
con­cili­ation pro­ceed­ings;
c.
sum­mary pro­ceed­ings, with the ex­cep­tion of in­ter­im meas­ures un­der Art­icle 248 let­ter d and fam­ily law dis­putes un­der Art­icles 271, 276, 302 and 305;
d.
ap­pel­late pro­ceed­ings.

61 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 99 Security for party costs

1 At the re­quest of the de­fend­ant, the plaintiff must provide se­cur­ity for party costs:

a.
if he or she has no res­id­ence or re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land;
b.
if he or she ap­pears to be in­solv­ent, not­ably if he or she has been de­clared bank­rupt or is in­volved in on­go­ing com­pos­i­tion pro­ceed­ings or if cer­ti­fic­ates of un­paid debts have been is­sued;
c.
if he or she owes costs from pri­or pro­ceed­ings; or
d.
if for oth­er reas­ons there seems to be a con­sid­er­able risk that the com­pens­a­tion will not be paid.

2 In the case of man­dat­ory join­der, se­cur­ity must be provided only if each party ful­fils one of the above-men­tioned con­di­tions.

3 No se­cur­ity need be provided:

a.
in sim­pli­fied pro­ceed­ings, with the ex­cep­tion of fin­an­cial dis­putes un­der Art­icle 243 para­graph 1;
b.
in di­vorce pro­ceed­ings;
c.
in sum­mary pro­ceed­ings, with the ex­cep­tion of the pro­ceed­ings in clear cases (Art. 257);
d.62
in pro­ceed­ings re­lat­ing to a dis­pute un­der the FADP63.

62 In­ser­ted by An­nex 1 No II 24 of the Data Pro­tec­tion Act of 25 Sept. 2020, in force since 1 Sept. 2023 (AS 2022 491; BBl 2017 6941).

63 SR 235.1

Art. 100 Nature and amount of security

1 Se­cur­ity may be provided in cash or in the form of a guar­an­tee from a bank with a branch in Switzer­land or from an in­sur­ance com­pany au­thor­ised to op­er­ate in Switzer­land.

2 The court may sub­sequently or­der the in­crease, re­duc­tion or re­turn of the se­cur­ity.

Art. 101 Provision of advance and security

1 The court sets a dead­line for the pro­vi­sion of the ad­vance and the se­cur­ity.

2 It may or­der in­ter­im meas­ures be­fore the se­cur­ity is provided.

3 If the ad­vance or se­cur­ity is not provided even with­in a peri­od of grace, the ac­tion or ap­plic­a­tion shall be de­clared in­ad­miss­ible.

Art. 102 Advance for taking evidence

1 Each party shall ad­vance the costs for tak­ing the evid­ence that he or she re­quires.

2 If the parties of­fer the same evid­ence, each party shall ad­vance half of the costs.

3 If one party fails to pay an ad­vance, the oth­er party may do so, fail­ing which the evid­ence shall not be taken. Mat­ters in which the court must es­tab­lish the facts ex of­fi­cio are re­served.

Art. 103 Appellate remedy

An ob­jec­tion may be filed against de­cisions re­lat­ing to ad­vances of costs and se­cur­ity.

Chapter 2 Allocation and Settlement of Procedural Costs

Art. 104 Decision on costs

1 As a gen­er­al rule, the court de­cides on the pro­ced­ur­al costs in the fi­nal de­cision.

2 Where an in­ter­im de­cision is made (Art. 237), the pro­ced­ur­al costs in­curred up to that point may be al­loc­ated.

3 The de­cision on the pro­ced­ur­al costs for in­ter­im meas­ures may be de­ferred un­til the fi­nal de­cision on the mer­its.

4 If a case is re­ferred back to a lower court, the high­er court may leave it to the lower court to al­loc­ate the costs of the ap­pel­late pro­ceed­ings.

Art. 105 Determination and allocation of costs

1 The court costs are de­term­ined and al­loc­ated ex of­fi­cio.

2 The court awards party costs ac­cord­ing to the tar­iffs (Art. 96). The parties may sub­mit a state­ment of costs.

Art. 106 General principles of allocation

1 The costs are charged to the un­suc­cess­ful party. If an ac­tion is not ad­mit­ted by the court or if it is with­drawn, the plaintiff is deemed to be the un­suc­cess­ful party; in the event of the ac­cept­ance of the claim it is the de­fend­ant.

2 If no party en­tirely is suc­cess­ful, the costs are al­loc­ated in ac­cord­ance with the out­come of the case.

3 If three or more per­sons are par­ti­cip­at­ing in the pro­ceed­ings as prin­cip­al parties or ac­cess­ory parties, the court shall de­term­ine each party's share of the costs ac­cord­ing to the ex­tent of their par­ti­cip­a­tion. In the case of man­dat­ory join­der, it may de­cide that they are jointly and sev­er­ally li­able.64

64 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 107 Discretionary allocation

1 The court may di­verge from the gen­er­al prin­ciples of al­loc­a­tion and al­loc­ate the costs at its own dis­cre­tion:

a.
if an ac­tion has been up­held in prin­ciple but not the full amount claimed, and if the amount of the award was de­term­ined at the court's dis­cre­tion or if the claim was dif­fi­cult to quanti­fy;
b.
if a party was caused to lit­ig­ate in good faith;
c.
in fam­ily law pro­ceed­ings;
d.
in pro­ceed­ings re­lat­ing to a re­gistered part­ner­ship;
e.
if the pro­ceed­ings are dis­missed as ground­less and the law does not provide oth­er­wise;
f.
if there are oth­er ex­traordin­ary cir­cum­stances that would res­ult in an al­loc­a­tion ac­cord­ing to the out­come of the case be­ing in­equit­able.

1bis In the event of the dis­missal of ac­tions un­der com­pany law for per­form­ance to the com­pany, the court may at its dis­cre­tion ap­por­tion the pro­ced­ur­al costs between the com­pany and the plaintiff.65

2 Court costs that are not at­trib­ut­able to any party or third party may be charged to the can­ton if equit­able.

65 In­ser­ted by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 17 March 2017 (Com­mer­cial Re­gister Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 957; BBl 2015 3617).

Art. 108 Unnecessary costs

Un­ne­ces­sary costs are charged to the party that caused them.

Art. 109 Allocation in the event of a settlement

1 If a case is settled in court, the costs are charged to the parties ac­cord­ing to the terms of the set­tle­ment.

2 The costs are al­loc­ated ac­cord­ing to Art­icles 106–108:

a
if the set­tle­ment does not provide for the al­loc­a­tion of costs; or
b.
if, in terms of the set­tle­ment, the costs are charged solely to a party that has been gran­ted leg­al aid.

Art. 110 Appellate remedy

The de­cision on costs may be sep­ar­ately chal­lenged by fil­ing an ob­jec­tion only.

Art. 111 Recovery of costs

1 Where a party who has paid an ad­vance is ordered to pay costs, the court costs shall be set off against the ad­vances paid. Oth­er­wise an ad­vance shall be re­fun­ded. The party li­able to pay the costs shall be re­quired to pay any short­fall.66

2 The party li­able to pay the costs shall pay the oth­er party the party costs awar­ded.67

3 The pro­vi­sions on leg­al aid are re­served.

66 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

67 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 112 Deferment, waiver, prescription and interest

1 The court may de­fer or, in the event of per­man­ent lack of means, waive the court costs.

2 The debt pre­scribes ten years after the close of pro­ceed­ings.

3 The de­fault in­terest is 5 per­cent.

Chapter 3 Special Provisions on Costs

Art. 113 Conciliation proceedings

1 No party costs are awar­ded in con­cili­ation pro­ceed­ings. Pay­ment by the can­ton of leg­al agents un­der the leg­al aid sys­tem is re­served.

2 No court costs are charged in dis­putes:

a.
re­lat­ing to the Gender Equal­ity Act of 24 March 199568;
b.
re­lat­ing to the Dis­ab­il­ity Dis­crim­in­a­tion Act of 13 Decem­ber 200269;
c.
re­lat­ing to the rent­al and lease of res­id­en­tial and busi­ness prop­erty or the lease of ag­ri­cul­tur­al prop­erty;
d.
re­lat­ing to an em­ploy­ment con­tract or the Re­cruit­ment Act of 6 Oc­to­ber 198970 up to an value in dis­pute of 30,000 francs;
e.
re­lat­ing to the Par­ti­cip­a­tion Act of 17 Decem­ber 199371;
f.
re­lat­ing to in­sur­ance sup­ple­ment­ary to the so­cial health in­sur­ance un­der the Fed­er­al Act of 18 March 199472 on Health In­sur­ance;
g.73
un­der the FADP74.

68 SR 151.1

69 SR 151.3

70 SR 823.11

71 SR 822.14

72 SR 832.10

73 In­ser­ted by An­nex 1 No II 24 of the Data Pro­tec­tion Act of 25 Sept. 2020, in force since 1 Sept. 2023 (AS 2022 491; BBl 2017 6941).

74 SR 235.1

Art. 114 Litigation proceedings

In lit­ig­a­tion pro­ceed­ings, no court costs are charged in dis­putes:

a.
re­lat­ing to the Gender Equal­ity Act of 24 March 199575;
b.
re­lat­ing to the Dis­ab­il­ity Dis­crim­in­a­tion Act of 13 Decem­ber 200276;
c.
re­lat­ing to an em­ploy­ment con­tract or the Re­cruit­ment Act of 6 Oc­to­ber 198977 up to an value in dis­pute of 30,000 francs;
d.
re­lat­ing to the Par­ti­cip­a­tion Act of 17 Decem­ber 199378;
e.
re­lat­ing to in­sur­ance sup­ple­ment­ary to the so­cial health in­sur­ance un­der the Fed­er­al Act of 18 March 199479 on Health In­sur­ance;
f.80
be­cause of vi­ol­ence, threats or har­ass­ment un­der Art­icle 28b CC81 or re­lat­ing to elec­tron­ic mon­it­or­ing un­der Art­icle 28c CC;
g.82
un­der the FADP83.

75 SR 151.1

76 SR 151.3

77 SR 823.11

78 SR 822.14

79 SR 832.10

80 In­ser­ted by No I 2 of the FA of 14 Dec. 2018 on Im­prov­ing the Pro­tec­tion of Per­sons Af­fected by Vi­ol­ence, in force since 1 Ju­ly 2020 (AS 2019 2273; BBl 2017 7307).

81 SR 210

82 In­ser­ted by An­nex 1 No II 24 of the Data Pro­tec­tion Act of 25 Sept. 2020, in force since 1 Sept. 2023 (AS 2022 491; BBl 2017 6941).

83 SR 235.1

Art. 115 Obligation to bear costs

1 Court costs may also be charged in cost-free pro­ceed­ings to a party who pro­ceeds in a vex­a­tious man­ner or in bad faith.

2 In the case of lit­ig­a­tion re­lat­ing to Art­icle 114 let­ter f, court costs may also be charged to the un­suc­cess­ful party if an in­junc­tion pur­su­ant to Art­icle 28b CC84 or elec­tron­ic mon­it­or­ing pur­su­ant to Art­icle 28c CC is ordered against them.85

84 SR 210

85 In­ser­ted by No I 2 of the FA of 14 Dec. 2018 on Im­prov­ing the Pro­tec­tion of Per­sons Af­fected by Vi­ol­ence, in force since 1 Ju­ly 2020 (AS 2019 2273; BBl 2017 7307).

Art. 116 Exemption under cantonal law

1 The can­tons may provide for fur­ther ex­emp­tions from pro­ced­ur­al costs.

2 Ex­emp­tions from costs that the can­ton provides for it­self, its com­munes or oth­er cor­por­a­tions un­der pub­lic can­ton­al law also ap­ply to the Con­fed­er­a­tion.

Chapter 4 Legal Aid

Art. 117 Entitlement

A per­son is en­titled to leg­al aid if:

a.
he or she does not have suf­fi­cient fin­an­cial re­sources; and
b.
his or her case does not seem devoid of any chances of suc­cess.

Art. 118 Extent

1 Leg­al aid com­prises:

a.
an ex­emp­tion from the ob­lig­a­tion to pay ad­vances and provide se­cur­ity;
b.
an ex­emp­tion from court costs;
c.
the ap­point­ment by the court of a leg­al agent un­der the leg­al aid sys­tem if this is ne­ces­sary to pro­tect the rights of the party con­cerned, and in par­tic­u­lar if the op­pos­ing party is rep­res­en­ted by a leg­al agent; the leg­al agent un­der the leg­al aid sys­tem may be ap­poin­ted pri­or to the court hear­ing in or­der to pre­pare the pro­ceed­ings.

2 Leg­al aid may be gran­ted for all or part of the case. It can also be gran­ted for the pre­cau­tion­ary tak­ing of evid­ence.86

3 The grant of leg­al aid does not re­lieve the party con­cerned from pay­ing party costs to the op­pos­ing party.

86 Second sen­tence in­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prove­ment of Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 119 Application and procedure

1 The ap­plic­a­tion for leg­al aid may be made be­fore or after an ac­tion be­comes pending.

2 The ap­plic­ant must dis­close his or her fin­an­cial cir­cum­stances in­clud­ing in­come and as­sets and state his or her po­s­i­tion on the mer­its of the case and the evid­ence he or she in­tends to pro­duce. He or she may name a pre­ferred leg­al agent in the ap­plic­a­tion.

3 The court shall de­cide on the ap­plic­a­tion in sum­mary pro­ceed­ings. The op­pos­ing party may be heard, and must be heard if leg­al aid is to cov­er se­cur­ity for party costs.

4 In ex­cep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, leg­al aid may be gran­ted with ret­ro­spect­ive ef­fect.

5 A new ap­plic­a­tion for leg­al aid must be made in ap­pel­late pro­ceed­ings.

6 No court costs are charged for pro­ceed­ings re­lat­ing to the grant­ing of leg­al aid, ex­cept in cases of bad faith or vex­a­tious con­duct.

Art. 120 Revocation of legal aid

The court shall re­voke leg­al aid if the con­di­tions are no longer ful­filled or if it comes to light that they nev­er were ful­filled.

Art. 121 Appellate remedy

An ob­jec­tion may be filed against the de­cision by which leg­al aid is re­fused or re­voked in full or in part.

Art. 122 Recovery of costs

1 If a party with leg­al aid is un­suc­cess­ful, the costs shall be settled as fol­lows:

a.
the leg­al agent un­der the leg­al aid sys­tem shall be ad­equately re­mu­ner­ated by the can­ton;
b.
the court costs shall be charged to the can­ton;
c.
the op­pos­ing party shall have its ad­vances re­fun­ded;
d.
the party with leg­al aid must pay party costs to the op­pos­ing party.

2 If the party with leg­al aid is suc­cess­ful, the leg­al agent un­der the leg­al aid sys­tem shall be ad­equately re­mu­ner­ated by the can­ton where com­pens­a­tion from the op­pos­ing party is ir­re­cov­er­able or likely to be ir­re­cov­er­able. By pay­ing the re­mu­ner­a­tion, the can­ton be­comes en­titled to en­force the claim for costs.

Art. 123 Reimbursement

1 A party must re­im­burse the leg­al aid re­ceived as soon as he or she is in a po­s­i­tion to do so.

2 The can­ton's claim pre­scribes 10 years after the close of pro­ceed­ings.

Title 9 Director of Proceedings, Procedural Acts and Deadlines

Chapter 1 Director of Proceedings

Art. 124 Principles

1 The court is the dir­ect­or of pro­ceed­ings. It is­sues the re­quired pro­ced­ur­al rul­ings to en­able the pro­ceed­ings to be pre­pared and con­duc­ted ef­fi­ciently.

2 The role of dir­ect­or of pro­ceed­ings may be del­eg­ated to one of the mem­bers of the court.

3 The court may at any time at­tempt to achieve an agree­ment between the parties.

Art. 125 Simplification of proceedings

In or­der to sim­pli­fy the pro­ceed­ings, the court may, in par­tic­u­lar:

a.
lim­it the pro­ceed­ings to in­di­vidu­al is­sues or pray­ers for re­lief;
b.
or­der the sep­ar­a­tion of jointly filed ac­tions;
c.
or­der the join­der of sep­ar­ately filed ac­tions;
d.
sep­ar­ate the coun­ter­claim from the main pro­ceed­ings.

Art. 126 Suspension of proceedings

1 The court may sus­pend pro­ceed­ings if ap­pro­pri­ate. The pro­ceed­ings may be sus­pen­ded in par­tic­u­lar if the de­cision de­pends on the out­come of oth­er pro­ceed­ings.

2 An ob­jec­tion may be filed against the sus­pen­sion.

Art. 127 Transfer of connected cases

1 If fac­tu­ally con­nec­ted cases are pending be­fore dif­fer­ent courts, the sub­sequently seised court may trans­fer the case to the court seised first if that court agrees to take over.

2 An ob­jec­tion may be filed against the trans­fer.

Art. 128 Procedural discipline and vexatious conduct

1 Any per­son who vi­ol­ates de­cency in court or dis­rupts the course of the pro­ceed­ings shall be li­able to a rep­rim­and or a dis­cip­lin­ary fine not ex­ceed­ing 1,000 francs. In ad­di­tion, the court may ex­clude the per­son con­cerned from the hear­ing.

2 The court may re­quest the as­sist­ance of the po­lice to en­force its or­ders.

3 In the event of bad faith or vex­a­tious con­duct, the parties and their rep­res­ent­at­ives shall be li­able to a dis­cip­lin­ary fine not ex­ceed­ing 2,000 francs, and in the event of a re­pe­ti­tion not ex­ceed­ing 5,000 francs.

4 An ob­jec­tion may be filed against the dis­cip­lin­ary fine.

Chapter 2 Forms of Procedural Acts

Section 1 Language of the Proceedings

Art. 129

1 The pro­ceed­ings shall be held in the of­fi­cial lan­guage of the can­ton in which the case is heard. Can­tons that re­cog­nise two or more of­fi­cial lan­guages shall reg­u­late their use in the pro­ceed­ings.

2 Can­ton­al law may provide for the fol­low­ing lan­guages to be used at the re­quest of all parties:

a.
a dif­fer­ent na­tion­al lan­guage, whereby no party may waive the lan­guage of pro­ceed­ings in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 in ad­vance;
b.
Eng­lish in in­ter­na­tion­al com­mer­cial dis­putes un­der Art­icle 6 para­graph 4 let­ter c be­fore the com­mer­cial court or the or­din­ary court.87

87 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Section 2 Party Submissions

Art. 130 Form 88

1 Sub­mis­sions must be filed with the court in the form of pa­per doc­u­ments or elec­tron­ic­ally. They must be signed.

2 In the case of elec­tron­ic sub­mis­sion, the sub­mis­sion and its en­clos­ures must bear a qual­i­fied elec­tron­ic sig­na­ture in ac­cord­ance with the Fed­er­al Act of 18 March 201689 on Elec­tron­ic Sig­na­tures. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late:

a.
the format for sub­mis­sions and their at­tach­ments;
b.
the meth­od of trans­mis­sion;
c.
the re­quire­ments for re­quest­ing the sub­mis­sion of doc­u­ments in pa­per form in the event of tech­nic­al prob­lems.

88 Amended by An­nex No II 5 of the FA of 18 March 2016 on Elec­tron­ic Sig­na­tures, in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 4651; BBl 2014 1001).

89 SR 943.03

Art. 131 Number of copies

Sub­mis­sions and their at­tach­ments in pa­per form must be filed once for the court and once for each op­pos­ing party, fail­ing which the court may set a peri­od of grace or make the cop­ies at the de­fault­ing party's ex­pense.

Art. 132 Defective, querulous and abusive submissions

1 The court shall set a dead­line for rec­ti­fy­ing form­al de­fects such as a miss­ing sig­na­ture or miss­ing power of at­tor­ney. In the event of de­fault, the sub­mis­sion is not taken in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

2 The same ap­plies to sub­mis­sions that are il­legible, im­prop­er, in­com­pre­hens­ible or in­co­her­ent.

3 Quer­ulous or ab­us­ive sub­mis­sions are re­turned to the sender without fur­ther form­al­it­ies.

Section 3 Summons

Art. 133 Content

The sum­mons con­tains:

a.
the name and ad­dress of the summoned party;
b.
the mat­ter in dis­pute and the parties;
c.
the ca­pa­city in which the party is summoned;
d.90
the place, date and time of the re­quired ap­pear­ance or the avail­ab­il­ity re­quired when us­ing elec­tron­ic equip­ment for au­dio or video trans­mis­sion;
d.
the place, date and time of the ap­pear­ance;
e.
the pro­ced­ur­al act to which the party is summoned;
f.
the con­sequences of de­fault;
g.
the date of the sum­mons and the seal of the court.

90 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 134 Timing

Un­less the law provides oth­er­wise, the sum­mons must be sent out at least 10 days pri­or to the date of ap­pear­ance.

Art. 135 Postponement of appearance

If there is good reas­on, the court may post­pone the date of an ap­pear­ance. It may do so:

a.
ex of­fi­cio; or
b.
if a re­quest to do so is made be­fore the date.

Section 4 Service of Process

Art. 136 Documents to be served

The court shall serve the per­sons con­cerned in par­tic­u­lar with:

a.
the sum­mons;
b.
rul­ings and de­cisions;
c.
the sub­mis­sions of the op­pos­ing party.

Art. 137 Service to a representative

If a party is rep­res­en­ted, ser­vice is made to the rep­res­ent­at­ive.

Art. 138 Form

1 The sum­mons, rul­ings and de­cisions are served by re­gistered mail or by oth­er means against con­firm­a­tion of re­ceipt.

2 Ser­vice is ac­com­plished when the doc­u­ment has been re­ceived by the ad­dress­ee or one of his or her em­ploy­ees or a per­son of at least 16 years of age liv­ing in the same house­hold, un­less the court in­structs that a doc­u­ment must be served per­son­ally on the ad­dress­ee.

3 Ser­vice is also deemed to have been ef­fected:

a.
in the case of a re­gistered let­ter that has not been col­lec­ted: on the sev­enth day after the failed at­tempt to serve it provided the per­son had to ex­pect such ser­vice;
b.
in the case of per­son­al ser­vice if the ad­dress­ee re­fuses to ac­cept ser­vice and if such re­fus­al is re­cor­ded by the bear­er: on the day of re­fus­al.

4 Oth­er doc­u­ments may be served by reg­u­lar mail.

Art. 139 Electronic service 91

1 With the con­sent of the per­son con­cerned, sum­monses, rul­ings and de­cisions may be served elec­tron­ic­ally. They must bear an elec­tron­ic sig­na­ture in ac­cord­ance with the Fed­er­al Act of 18 March 201692 on Elec­tron­ic Sig­na­tures.

2 The Fed­er­al Coun­cil reg­u­lates:

a.
the sig­na­ture to be used;
b.
the format for sum­monses, rul­ings and de­cisions and their at­tach­ments;
c.
the meth­od of trans­mis­sion;
d.
the point in time at which the sum­mons, rul­ing or de­cision is deemed to have been served.

91 Amended by An­nex No II 5 of the FA of 18 March 2016 on Elec­tron­ic Sig­na­tures, in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 4651; BBl 2014 1001).

92 SR 943.03

Art. 140 Domicile for service

The court may in­struct parties with dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice abroad to provide a dom­i­cile for ser­vice in Switzer­land.

Art. 141 Public notice

1 Ser­vice shall be ef­fected by no­tice in the of­fi­cial gaz­ette of the can­ton or in the Swiss Of­fi­cial Gaz­ette of Com­merce where:

a.
the where­abouts of the ad­dress­ee are un­known and can­not be as­cer­tained des­pite mak­ing reas­on­able en­quir­ies;
b.
ser­vice is im­possible or would lead to ex­cep­tion­al in­con­veni­ence;
c.
if a party with dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice abroad has not provided a dom­i­cile for ser­vice in Switzer­land des­pite be­ing in­struc­ted to do so by the court.

2 Ser­vice is deemed ac­com­plished on the day of pub­lic­a­tion.

Section 5 Use of Electronic Equipment for Audio or Video Transmission93

93 Inserted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Improving Practicality and Law Enforcement), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 141a Principles

1The court may con­duct pro­ced­ur­al acts or­ally on re­quest or ex of­fi­cio by us­ing elec­tron­ic au­dio or video equip­ment, in par­tic­u­lar by video­con­fer­ence, or au­thor­ise the per­sons par­ti­cip­at­ing in the pro­ceed­ings to do so by us­ing such equip­ment, un­less the law provides oth­er­wise and all parties agree.

2 If this Code re­quires the parties to ap­pear in per­son, the use of elec­tron­ic equip­ment is only per­mit­ted if the parties agree and there are no over­rid­ing pub­lic or private in­terests to the con­trary.

3 If a hear­ing in ac­cord­ance with this Code is pub­lic, the court shall grant ac­cess to the courtroom on re­quest. The court may also grant ac­cess by elec­tron­ic means without a pri­or re­quest be­ing re­quired.

Art. 141b Requirements

1The fol­low­ing re­quire­ments must be met when us­ing elec­tron­ic au­dio or video equip­ment:

a.
The trans­mis­sion of sound and im­ages between all per­sons par­ti­cip­at­ing in the pro­ced­ur­al act takes place sim­ul­tan­eously.
b.
The ex­am­in­a­tion of wit­nesses, ques­tion­ing of parties, giv­ing of evid­ence and per­son­al hear­ings shall be re­cor­ded; oth­er hear­ings may ex­cep­tion­ally be re­cor­ded on re­quest or ex of­fi­cio, un­less the sole pur­pose of a hear­ing is to freely dis­cuss the mat­ter in dis­pute or to at­tempt to reach an agree­ment.
c.
Data pro­tec­tion and data se­cur­ity are guar­an­teed.

2 With the con­sent of the per­sons con­cerned, video trans­mis­sion may be dis­pensed with by way of ex­cep­tion if there is par­tic­u­lar ur­gency or oth­er spe­cial cir­cum­stances in the in­di­vidu­al case.

3 The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the tech­nic­al re­quire­ments and the re­quire­ments for data pro­tec­tion and data se­cur­ity.

Chapter 3 Limitation Periods, Default and Reinstatement

Section 1 Limitation Periods

Art. 142 Computation

1 Lim­it­a­tion peri­ods triggered by a com­mu­nic­a­tion or the oc­cur­rence of an event start­ing on the fol­low­ing day.

1bis If a doc­u­ment is served by or­din­ary post on a Sat­urday, a Sunday or a pub­lic hol­i­day re­cog­nised un­der fed­er­al or can­ton­al law at the place of jur­is­dic­tion (Art. 138 para. 4), the com­mu­nic­a­tion un­der para­graph 1 shall be deemed to have been made on the fol­low­ing work­ing day.94

2 If a lim­it­a­tion peri­od is meas­ured in months, it ex­pires on the same date of the last month as the date of the month in which the peri­od star­ted to run. In the ab­sence of such a date, the peri­od ex­pires on the last day of the month.

3 If the last day of a lim­it­a­tion peri­od is a Sat­urday, a Sunday or a pub­lic hol­i­day re­cog­nised by fed­er­al or can­ton­al law at the loc­a­tion of the court, the peri­od ex­pires on the fol­low­ing work­ing day.

94 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 143 Compliance

1 Sub­mis­sions must be filed no later than the last day of the lim­it­a­tion peri­od, either by fil­ing with the court or by hand­ing over to Swiss Post or a dip­lo­mat­ic mis­sion or con­su­lar of­fice of Switzer­land for for­ward­ing on to the court.

1bis Sub­mis­sions that are mis­takenly filed with­in the time lim­it with a Swiss court that does not have jur­is­dic­tion are deemed to have been filed on time. If an­oth­er court in Switzer­land has jur­is­dic­tion, the court without jur­is­dic­tion shall for­ward the sub­mis­sion ex of­fi­cio.95

2 In case of elec­tron­ic sub­mis­sion, the rel­ev­ant time for com­pli­ance with a dead­line is that at which the re­ceipt is is­sued that con­firms that all the steps have been com­pleted that the party must carry out for trans­mis­sion.96

3 Pay­ment to the court is made with­in the dead­line if the funds are handed over to Swiss Post in fa­vour of the court or deb­ited from a postal or bank ac­count in Switzer­land no later than on the last day of the lim­it­a­tion peri­od.

95 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

96 Amended by An­nex No II 5 of the FA of 18 March 2016 on Elec­tron­ic Sig­na­tures, in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 4651; BBl 2014 1001).

Art. 144 Extension

1 Stat­utory lim­it­a­tion peri­ods may not be ex­ten­ded.

2 Lim­it­a­tion peri­ods set by the court may be ex­ten­ded for good reas­on if the re­quest to do so is made be­fore the peri­od ex­pires.

Art. 145 Suspension of limitation periods

1 Stat­utory lim­it­a­tion peri­ods or peri­ods set by the court shall be sus­pen­ded:

a.
from the sev­enth day be­fore East­er up to and in­clud­ing the sev­enth day after East­er;
b.
from 15 Ju­ly up to and in­clud­ing 15 Au­gust;
c.
from 18 Decem­ber up to and in­clud­ing 2 Janu­ary.

2 The sus­pen­sion does not ap­ply:

a.
in con­cili­ation pro­ceed­ings;
b.
in sum­mary pro­ceed­ings.

3 Parties must be made aware of the ex­cep­tions provided in para­graph 2 above.

4 The pro­vi­sions of this Code on the sus­pen­sion of time lim­its ap­ply to all ac­tions un­der the DEBA97 which are to be brought be­fore a court. They do not ap­ply to ob­jec­tions filed with the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity.98

97 SR 281.1

98 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 146 Effects of suspension

1 If ser­vice is ef­fected dur­ing sus­pen­sion, the lim­it­a­tion peri­od starts to run on the first day fol­low­ing the end of the sus­pen­sion.

2 No hear­ings are held in court dur­ing the sus­pen­sion peri­od, un­less the parties agree oth­er­wise.

Section 2 Default and Reinstatement

Art. 147 Default and consequences of default

1 A party is in de­fault if he or she fails to ac­com­plish a pro­ced­ur­al act with­in the set lim­it­a­tion peri­od or does not ap­pear when summoned to ap­pear.

2 The pro­ceed­ings shall con­tin­ue without the act de­faul­ted on un­less the law provides oth­er­wise.

3 The court shall draw the parties' at­ten­tion to the con­sequences of de­fault.

Art. 148 Reinstatement of proceedings

1 The court may on ap­plic­a­tion grant a peri­od of grace or sum­mon the parties again for a new ap­pear­ance provided the de­fault­ing party shows cred­ibly that he or she was not re­spons­ible for the de­fault or was re­spons­ible only to a minor ex­tent.

2 The ap­plic­a­tion must be sub­mit­ted with­in 10 days of the day when the cause of de­fault has ceased to ap­ply.

3 If no­tice of a de­cision has been giv­en to the parties, re­in­state­ment may be re­ques­ted only with­in six months after the de­cision has come in­to force.

Art. 149 Reinstatement procedure 99

The court shall in­vite the op­pos­ing party to com­ment on the ap­plic­a­tion and shall is­sue a fi­nal de­cision un­less the re­fus­al to re­in­state the pro­ceed­ings res­ults in the per­man­ent loss of rights.

99 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Title 10 Proof

Chapter 1 General Provisions

Art. 150 Subject of evidence

1 Proof is re­quired of facts that are leg­ally rel­ev­ant and dis­puted.

2 Proof may also be re­quired of com­mon prac­tice, loc­al us­ages and, in fin­an­cial dis­putes, for­eign law.

Art. 151 Known facts

Proof is not re­quired in sup­port of pub­licly known facts, facts known to the court and com­monly ac­cep­ted mat­ters of ex­per­i­ence.

Art. 152 Right to have evidence accepted

1 Each party is en­titled to have the court ac­cept the evid­ence that he or she of­fers in the re­quired form and time.

2 Il­leg­ally ob­tained evid­ence shall be con­sidered only if there is an over­rid­ing in­terest in find­ing the truth.

Art. 153 Taking of evidence ex officio

1 The court shall take evid­ence ex of­fi­cio whenev­er it must as­cer­tain the facts ex of­fi­cio.

2 It may take evid­ence ex of­fi­cio if ser­i­ous doubts ex­ist as to the truth of an un­dis­puted fact.

Art. 154 Ruling on evidence

Be­fore evid­ence is taken, the court shall is­sue the re­quired rul­ings. They in­dic­ate, in par­tic­u­lar, the ad­miss­ible evid­ence and, for each fact, which party has the bur­den of proof or counter-proof. Rul­ings on evid­ence may be changed or amended any time.

Art. 155 Taking of evidence

1 The tak­ing of evid­ence may be del­eg­ated to one or more mem­bers of the court.

2 A party may, for good cause, re­quest that the evid­ence be taken by the court that de­cides the case.

3 The parties have the right to par­ti­cip­ate in the tak­ing of evid­ence.

Art. 156 Safeguarding legitimate interests

The court shall take ap­pro­pri­ate meas­ures to en­sure that tak­ing evid­ence does not in­fringe the le­git­im­ate in­terests of any parties or third party, such as busi­ness secrets.

Art. 157 Free assessment of evidence

The court forms its opin­ion based on its free as­sess­ment of the evid­ence taken.

Art. 158 Precautionary taking of evidence

1 The court shall take evid­ence at any time if:

a.
the law grants the right to do so; or
b.
the ap­plic­ant shows cred­ibly that the evid­ence is at risk or that it has a le­git­im­ate in­terest.

2 The pro­vi­sions re­gard­ing in­ter­im meas­ures ap­ply.

Art. 159 Management bodies of a legal entity

If a leg­al en­tity is party to pro­ceed­ings, its man­age­ment bod­ies are deemed to be parties when tak­ing evid­ence.

Chapter 2 Duty to Cooperate and Right to Refuse

Section 1 General Provisions

Art. 160 Duty to cooperate

1 Parties and third parties have a duty to co­oper­ate in the tak­ing of evid­ence. In par­tic­u­lar, they have the duty:

a.
to make a truth­ful de­pos­ition as a party or a wit­ness;
b.100
to pro­duce the phys­ic­al re­cords, with the ex­cep­tion of doc­u­ments form­ing cor­res­pond­ence between a party or a third party and a law­yer who is en­titled to act as a pro­fes­sion­al rep­res­ent­at­ive, or with a pat­ent at­tor­ney as defined in Art­icle 2 of the Pat­ent At­tor­ney Act of 20 March 2009101;
c.
to al­low an ex­am­in­a­tion of their per­son or prop­erty by an ex­pert.

2 The court has free dis­cre­tion to de­cide on the duty of minors to co­oper­ate.102 It shall take ac­count of the child's wel­fare.

3 Third parties that are un­der a duty to co­oper­ate are en­titled to reas­on­able com­pens­a­tion.

100 Amended by No I 4 of the FA of 28 Sept. 2012 on the Amend­ment of Pro­ced­ur­al Pro­vi­sions on Law­yers' Pro­fes­sion­al Secrecy, in force since 1 May 2013 (AS 2013 847; BBl 2011 8181).

101 SR 935.62

102 Amended by An­nex 2 No 3 of the FA of 19 Dec. 2008, in force since 1 Jan. 2013 (AS 2010 1739, 2011 725; BBl 2006 72217001).

Art. 161 Advice

1 The court shall ad­vise the parties and third parties of their duty to co­oper­ate, the right to re­fuse to co­oper­ate and the con­sequences of de­fault.

2 The court may not con­sider the evid­ence taken if parties or third parties have not been ad­vised of their right to re­fuse to co­oper­ate un­less the per­son con­cerned con­sents or his or her re­fus­al would not have been jus­ti­fied.

Art. 162 Justified refusal to cooperate

The court may not in­fer from a party's or third party's le­git­im­ate re­fus­al to co­oper­ate that the al­leged fact is proven.

Section 2 Parties' Right to Refuse

Art. 163 Right to refuse

1 A party may re­fuse to co­oper­ate if:

a.
the tak­ing of evid­ence would ex­pose a close as­so­ci­ate as defined in Art­icle 165 to crim­in­al pro­sec­u­tion or civil li­ab­il­ity;
b.
the dis­clos­ure of a secret would be an of­fence un­der Art­icle 321 of the Swiss Crim­in­al Code (SCC)103; the fore­go­ing does not ap­ply to aud­it­ors; Art­icle 166 para­graph 1 let­ter b third sub­set ap­plies by ana­logy.

2 Oth­er con­fid­ants en­trus­ted with leg­ally pro­tec­ted secrets may re­fuse to co­oper­ate if they cred­ibly demon­strate that the in­terest in keep­ing the secret out­weighs the in­terest in find­ing the truth.

Art. 164 Unjustified refusal

If a party re­fuses to co­oper­ate without val­id reas­ons, the court shall take this in­to ac­count when ap­prais­ing the evid­ence.

Section 3 Third Parties' Right to Refuse

Art. 165 Absolute right to refuse

1 The fol­low­ing per­sons have the right to re­fuse to co­oper­ate:

a.
any per­son who is or was mar­ried to or co­hab­its with a party;
b.
any per­son who has a child with a party;
c.
any per­son who is re­lated to a party by birth or mar­riage in dir­ect line or col­lat­er­ally up to the third de­gree;
d.
the foster par­ents, foster chil­dren and foster sib­lings of a party;
e.104
the per­son ap­poin­ted guard­i­an or deputy for a party.

2 A re­gistered part­ner­ship is deemed equi­val­ent to mar­riage.

3 Step-sib­lings are deemed equi­val­ent to sib­lings.

104 Amended by An­nex 2 No 3 of the FA of 19 Dec. 2008, in force since 1 Jan. 2013 (AS 2010 1739, 2011 725; BBl 2006 72217001).

Art. 166 Limited right to refuse

1 Any third party may re­fuse to co­oper­ate:

a.
in es­tab­lish­ing facts that would ex­pose him or her or a close as­so­ci­ate as defined in Art­icle 165 to crim­in­al pro­sec­u­tion or civil li­ab­il­ity;
b.
to the ex­tent that the rev­el­a­tion of a secret would be an of­fence by vir­tue of Art­icle 321 SCC105; aud­it­ors ex­cep­ted; however, with the ex­cep­tion of law­yers and cler­ics, third parties must co­oper­ate if they are sub­ject to a dis­clos­ure duty or if they have been re­leased from duty of secrecy, un­less they show cred­ibly that the in­terest in keep­ing the secret takes pre­ced­ence over the in­terest in find­ing the truth;
c.106
in es­tab­lish­ing facts that have been con­fided in him or her in his or her of­fi­cial ca­pa­city as pub­lic of­fi­cial as defined in Art­icle 110 para­graph 3 SCC or as a mem­ber of a pub­lic au­thor­ity, or facts that have come to his or her at­ten­tion in ex­er­cising his or her of­fice or while car­ry­ing out an aux­il­i­ary activ­ity for a pub­lic of­fi­cial or an au­thor­ity; he or she must co­oper­ate if he or she is sub­ject to a dis­clos­ure duty or if he or she has been au­thor­ised to testi­fy by his or her su­per­i­or au­thor­ity;
d.107
when asked to testi­fy as an om­bud­sper­son, mar­riage or fam­ily coun­sel­lor or me­di­at­or on facts that have come to his or her at­ten­tion in the course of his or her activ­it­ies;
e.
when asked in his or her ca­pa­city as pro­fes­sion­al or aux­il­i­ary per­son en­gaged in the pub­lic­a­tion of in­form­a­tion in the ed­it­or­i­al part of a peri­od­ic­al to re­veal the iden­tity of the au­thor or the con­tent or source of his or her in­form­a­tion.

2 The con­fid­ants of oth­er leg­ally pro­tec­ted secrets may re­fuse to co­oper­ate if they show cred­ibly that the in­terest in keep­ing the secret out­weighs the in­terest in es­tab­lish­ing the truth.

3 The spe­cial pro­vi­sions of so­cial se­cur­ity law con­cern­ing the dis­clos­ure of data are re­served.

105 SR 311.0

106 Amended by An­nex 1 No 5 of the In­form­a­tion Se­cur­ity Act of 18 Dec. 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2023 (AS 2022 232, 750; BBl 2017 2953).

107 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Main­ten­ance), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529).

Art. 167 Unjustified refusal

1 If a third party re­fuses to co­oper­ate without jus­ti­fic­a­tion, the court may:

a.
im­pose a dis­cip­lin­ary fine up to 1,000 francs;
b.
threaten sanc­tions un­der Art­icle 292 SCC108;
c.
or­der the use of com­puls­ory meas­ures;
d.
charge the third party the costs caused by the re­fus­al.

2 The de­fault of a third party has the same con­sequences as re­fus­ing to co­oper­ate without a val­id reas­on.

3 The third party may file an ob­jec­tion against the court's or­der.

Section 4 Right to Refuse in relation to the Activities of an In-House Legal Service109

109 Inserted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Improving Practicality and Law Enforcement), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 167a

1 A party may re­fuse to co­oper­ate and to hand over doc­u­ments in con­nec­tion with the activ­it­ies of its in-house leg­al ser­vice if:

a.
it is re­gistered as a leg­al en­tity in the Swiss Com­mer­cial Re­gister or in a com­par­able for­eign re­gister;
b.
the leg­al ser­vice is headed by a per­son who holds a can­ton­al li­cence to prac­tise law or who ful­fils the pro­fes­sion­al re­quire­ments for prac­tising law in their coun­try of ori­gin; and
c.
the activ­ity in ques­tion would be con­sidered pro­fes­sion-spe­cif­ic for a law­yer.

2 A third party may re­fuse to co­oper­ate and to hand over doc­u­ments in con­nec­tion with their activ­it­ies in an in­tern­al leg­al ser­vice sub­ject to the con­di­tions set out in para­graph 1.

3 The parties and the third parties may file an ob­jec­tion against de­cisions on the re­fus­al to co­oper­ate in ac­cord­ance with para­graphs 1 and 2.

4 The costs of dis­putes con­cern­ing the right of re­fus­al in ac­cord­ance with para­graphs 1 and 2 shall be borne by the party or third per­son who in­vokes it.

Chapter 3 Evidence

Section 1 Admissible Evidence

Art. 168

1 The fol­low­ing evid­ence is ad­miss­ible:

a.
testi­mony;
b.
phys­ic­al re­cords;
c.
in­spec­tions;
d.
ex­pert opin­ion;
e.
writ­ten state­ments;
f.
the ex­am­in­a­tion of and evid­ence giv­en by the parties.

2 The pro­vi­sions re­lat­ing to mat­ters of chil­dren in fam­ily law pro­ceed­ings are re­served.

Section 2 Testimony

Art. 169 Subject matter

Any per­son who is not a party may testi­fy on mat­ters that he or she has dir­ectly wit­nessed.

Art. 170 Summons

1 Wit­nesses are summoned by the court.

2 The court may al­low the parties to bring along wit­nesses without a sum­mons.

3 A wit­ness may be ques­tioned at his or her place of res­id­ence. The parties must be no­ti­fied there­of in ad­vance.

Art. 170a Examination by video conference 110

The court may con­duct the ex­am­in­a­tion of a wit­ness by video­con­fer­ence or oth­er elec­tron­ic meth­od of au­dio or video trans­mis­sion, or ques­tion a wit­ness by such means while the oth­er par­ti­cipants are present on the court's premises, provided there are no over­rid­ing pub­lic or private in­terests, in par­tic­u­lar the safety of the wit­ness, to the con­trary.

110 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 171 Examination procedure

1 A wit­ness shall be cau­tioned as to the re­quire­ment to tell the truth be­fore be­ing ex­amined; if at least 14 years of age, the wit­ness shall also be ad­vised of the crim­in­al con­sequences of per­jury (Art. 307 SCC111).

2 The court shall ques­tion each wit­ness in­di­vidu­ally with no oth­er wit­nesses present; the fore­go­ing is sub­ject to the pro­vi­sion on con­front­a­tion.

3 The wit­ness must testi­fy without notes; the court may au­thor­ise the use of writ­ten doc­u­ments.

4 The court shall ex­clude wit­nesses from the re­mainder of the hear­ing as long as they have not been re­leased from be­ing a wit­ness.

Art. 172 Content of the examination

The court shall ask wit­nesses:

a.
to state their par­tic­u­lars;
b.
to de­scribe their per­son­al re­la­tion­ship with the parties and oth­er cir­cum­stances that may be rel­ev­ant to the cred­ib­il­ity of their testi­mony;
c.
to state their ob­ser­va­tions on the facts of the case.

Art. 173 Additional questions

The parties may re­quest that ad­di­tion­al ques­tions be put to the wit­ness, or, with the con­sent of the court, they may them­selves ask such ques­tions.

Art. 174 Confrontation

Wit­nesses may be con­fron­ted with oth­er wit­nesses and with the parties.

Art. 175 Testimony of an expert witness

If a wit­ness has spe­cial ex­pert­ise, the court may also ask him or her ques­tions about his or her as­sess­ment of the facts of the case.

Art. 176 Transcript

1 The es­sen­tial de­tails of the state­ment shall be placed on re­cord, which is then read out or giv­en to the wit­ness to read and there­after signed by the wit­ness. Where a party has re­ques­ted ad­di­tion­al ques­tions, but the re­quest has been re­jec­ted, the ques­tions shall also be re­cor­ded if a party so re­quests.112

2 In ad­di­tion, the state­ment may be re­cor­ded on tape, by video or by us­ing oth­er ap­pro­pri­ate tech­nic­al aids.

3113

112 Amended by No I 1 of the FA of 28 Sept. 2012 (Tran­scrip­tion Reg­u­la­tions), in force since 1 May 2013 (AS 2013 851; BBl 2012 57075719).

113 In­ser­ted by No I 1 of the FA of 28 Sept. 2012 (Tran­scrip­tion Reg­u­la­tions) (AS 2013 851; BBl 2012 57075719). Re­pealed by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), with ef­fect from 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 176a Transcript of recordings 114

If the state­ments made dur­ing a hear­ing are re­cor­ded us­ing tech­nic­al aids, the fol­low­ing derog­a­tions ap­ply to the tran­script:

a.
The tran­script may be cre­ated ret­ro­spect­ively based on the re­cord­ing.
b.
The court or the mem­ber of court con­duct­ing the ex­am­in­a­tion may dis­pense with read­ing the tran­script to the wit­ness or giv­ing the wit­ness the tran­script to read and sign.
c.
The re­cord­ing is placed on file.

114 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Section 3 Physical Records

Art. 177 Definition 115

Phys­ic­al re­cords are doc­u­ments that are suit­able to prove leg­ally sig­ni­fic­ant facts, such as pa­pers, draw­ings, plans, pho­tos, films, au­dio re­cord­ings, elec­tron­ic files and the like as well as private ex­pert opin­ions ob­tained by the parties.

115 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 178 Authenticity

The party in­vok­ing a phys­ic­al re­cord must prove its au­then­ti­city if this is dis­puted by the op­pos­ing party; the op­pos­ing party must give ad­equate grounds for dis­put­ing au­then­ti­city.

Art. 179 Probative effect of public registers and official records

Pub­lic re­gisters and of­fi­cial re­cords are con­clus­ive proof of the facts stated therein, un­less their con­tent is proven to be in­cor­rect

Art. 180 Production of physical records

1 A copy of the phys­ic­al re­cord may be pro­duced in place of the ori­gin­al. The court or a party may re­quest that the ori­gin­al or an of­fi­cially cer­ti­fied copy be pro­duced if there is jus­ti­fied doubt as to the au­then­ti­city of the phys­ic­al re­cord.

2 If parts of a lengthy phys­ic­al re­cord are cited as evid­ence, those parts must be high­lighted.

Section 4 Inspection

Art. 181 Procedure

1 At the re­quest of a party or ex of­fi­cio, the court may con­duct an in­spec­tion in or­der to see the facts for it­self or for a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the case.

2 The court may sum­mon wit­nesses or ex­perts to the in­spec­tion.

3 The ob­ject of the in­spec­tion must be brought to court if it can be moved without dif­fi­culty.

Art. 182 Record

A re­cord must be kept of the in­spec­tion. If ap­pro­pri­ate, the re­cord shall in­clude plans, draw­ings, pho­to­graphs and oth­er tech­nic­al re­sources.

Section 5 Expert Opinion

Art. 183 Principles

1 At the re­quest of a party or ex of­fi­cio, the court may ob­tain an opin­ion from one or more ex­perts. The court must hear the parties first.

2 The same grounds ap­ply for the re­cus­al of ex­perts as ap­ply to judges and ju­di­cial of­ficers.

3 If the court re­lies on the spe­cial ex­pert­ise of one of its mem­bers, it must in­form the parties so that they may com­ment.

Art. 184 Rights and obligations of the expert

1 The ex­pert must tell the truth and must sub­mit his or her opin­ion with­in the set dead­line.

2 The court shall cau­tion the ex­pert as to the crim­in­al con­sequences of per­jury by an ex­pert wit­ness in terms of Art­icle 307 SCC116 and of a breach of of­fi­cial secrecy un­der Art­icle 320 SCC as well as the con­sequences of de­fault or fail­ure to per­form the man­date ad­equately.

3 The ex­pert is en­titled to a fee. An ob­jec­tion may be filed against the de­cision of the court on the fee.

Art. 185 Mandate

1 The court shall in­struct the ex­pert and shall sub­mit the rel­ev­ant ques­tions to him, either in writ­ing or or­ally at the hear­ing.

2 The court shall give the parties the op­por­tun­ity to re­spond to the ques­tions to be put to the ex­pert and to pro­pose that they be mod­i­fied or sup­ple­men­ted.

3 The court shall provide the ex­pert with the ne­ces­sary files and set a dead­line for sub­mit­ting the opin­ion.

Art. 186 Enquiries by the expert

1 With the au­thor­isa­tion of the court, the ex­pert may carry out his or her own en­quir­ies. He or she must dis­close the res­ults of the en­quir­ies in the opin­ion.

2 At the re­quest of a party or ex of­fi­cio, the court may or­der that the ex­pert's en­quir­ies be car­ried out again in ac­cord­ance with the rules on tak­ing evid­ence.

Art. 187 Submission of the opinion

1 The court may or­der that the ex­pert sub­mits his or her opin­ion in writ­ing or presents it or­ally. It may also sum­mon the ex­pert to the hear­ing in or­der to ex­plain his or her writ­ten opin­ion. Art­icle 170a ap­plies mu­tatis mutandis.117

2 An or­ally presen­ted opin­ion must be placed on re­cord in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 176 and 176a.118

3 If two or more ex­perts have been man­dated, each one shall sub­mit a sep­ar­ate opin­ion, un­less the court de­cides oth­er­wise.

4 The court shall give the parties the op­por­tun­ity to ask for ex­plan­a­tions or to put ad­di­tion­al ques­tions.

117 Third sen­tence in­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

118 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 188 Default and inadequate performance

1 If the ex­pert does not sub­mit his or her opin­ion on time, the court may re­voke the man­date and in­struct an­oth­er ex­pert.

2 If an opin­ion is in­com­plete, un­clear or in­suf­fi­ciently reasoned, the court may at the re­quest of a party or ex of­fi­cio or­der that the opin­ion be com­pleted or ex­plained, or it may call in an­oth­er ex­pert.

Art. 189 Arbitrator's opinion

1 The parties may agree to ob­tain an ar­bit­rat­or's opin­ion on the mat­ters in dis­pute.

2 Art­icle 17 para­graph 2 gov­erns the form of the agree­ment.

3 The court is bound by the ar­bit­rat­or's opin­ion with re­gard to the facts es­tab­lished therein provided:

a.
the parties are free to dis­pose of the leg­al re­la­tion­ship;
b.
no grounds for re­cus­al ex­is­ted against the ex­pert ar­bit­rat­or; and
c.
the opin­ion has been stated in an im­par­tial man­ner and is not mani­festly in­cor­rect.

Section 6 Written Information

Art. 190

1 The court may ob­tain in­form­a­tion in writ­ing from of­fi­cial au­thor­it­ies.

2 It may ob­tain in­form­a­tion in writ­ing from private per­sons if the form­al ex­am­in­a­tion of a wit­ness seems un­ne­ces­sary.

Section 7 Examination of the Parties and Giving Evidence

Art. 191 Examination of the parties

1 The court may ques­tion one or both parties on the rel­ev­ant facts of the case.

2 Be­fore the ex­am­in­a­tion, the parties shall be cau­tioned that they must tell the truth and ad­vised that if they wil­fully fail to do so, they may be li­able to a dis­cip­lin­ary fine not ex­ceed­ing 2,000 francs or, in the event of re­peated fail­ure, not ex­ceed­ing 5,000 francs.

Art. 192 Giving evidence

1 The court may ex of­fi­cio or­der one or both parties to give evid­ence sub­ject to crim­in­al pen­al­ties for fail­ure to do so.

2 Be­fore giv­ing evid­ence, the parties shall be cau­tioned that they must tell the truth and ad­vised of the crim­in­al con­sequences of per­jury (Art. 306 SCC119).

Art. 193 Transcript and video conference procedure 120

Art­icles 170a, 176 and 176a ap­ply mu­tatis mutandis to the ques­tion­ing of parties and the evid­ence giv­en.

120 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Title 11 Mutual Assistance between Swiss Courts

Art. 194 Principle

1 Courts are ob­liged to provide mu­tu­al as­sist­ance.

2 They shall cor­res­pond dir­ectly with each oth­er121.

121 The Swiss ju­di­cial au­thor­ity with geo­graph­ic­al jur­is­dic­tion for mu­tu­al as­sist­ance re­quests can be as­cer­tained via the fol­low­ing web­site: www.elorge.ad­min.ch

Art. 195 Procedural acts in another canton

Any court may carry out ne­ces­sary pro­ced­ur­al acts dir­ectly in an­oth­er can­ton; in par­tic­u­lar, it may hold hear­ings and take evid­ence there.

Art. 196 Mutual assistance

1 The court may re­quest mu­tu­al as­sist­ance. The re­quest may be made in the of­fi­cial lan­guage of either the re­quest­ing or the re­ques­ted court.

2 The re­ques­ted court shall no­ti­fy the re­quest­ing court and the parties of the place and time of the pro­ced­ur­al act.

3 The re­ques­ted court may de­mand the re­im­burse­ment of its out­lays.

Part 2 Special Provisions

Title 1 Attempt at Conciliation

Chapter 1 Scope of Application and Conciliation Authority

Art. 197 Principle

Lit­ig­a­tion shall be pre­ceded by an at­tempt at con­cili­ation be­fore a con­cili­ation au­thor­ity.

Art. 198 Exceptions

Con­cili­ation pro­ceed­ings are not held:

a.
in sum­mary pro­ceed­ings;
abis.122
in pro­ceed­ings on vi­ol­ence, threats or har­ass­ment pur­su­ant to Art­icle 28b CC123 or on elec­tron­ic mon­it­or­ing pur­su­ant to Art­icle 28c CC;
b.
in pro­ceed­ings on civil status;
bbis.124
in pro­ceed­ings re­lat­ing to main­ten­ance for minor and adult chil­dren and oth­er chil­dren’s mat­ters;
c.
in di­vorce pro­ceed­ings;
d.125
in pro­ceed­ings for the dis­sol­u­tion or an­nul­ment of a re­gistered part­ner­ship;
e.
for the fol­low­ing ac­tions arising from the DEBA126:
1.
ac­tion for re­lease from a debt (Art. 83 para. 2 DEBA),
2.
ac­tion for a de­clar­at­ory judg­ment (Art. 85a DEBA),
3.
third party ac­tion (Art. 106-109 DEBA),
4.
ac­tion for par­ti­cip­a­tion (Art. 111 DEBA),
5.
third party ac­tions and ac­tions by the bank­rupt es­tate (Art. 242 DEBA),
6.
ac­tion to chal­lenge the sched­ule of claims (Art. 148 and 250 DEBA),
7.
ac­tion to as­cer­tain new as­sets (Art. 265a DEBA),
8.
ac­tion for the re­cov­ery of items that are sub­ject to the right of re­ten­tion (Art. 284 DEBA);
f.127
in dis­putes for which a court of sole can­ton­al in­stance has jur­is­dic­tion pur­su­ant to Art­icle 7 of this Code;
f.
in dis­putes for which a court of sole can­ton­al in­stance has jur­is­dic­tion pur­su­ant to Art­icles 5 and 6;
g.
for prin­cip­al in­ter­ven­tion, coun­ter­claim and third-party ac­tions;
h.128
if the court has set a dead­line for fil­ing the ac­tion, and in the case of ac­tions that are com­bined with such an ac­tion, provided that the ac­tions are fac­tu­ally re­lated;
i.129
in ac­tions be­fore the Fed­er­al Pat­ent Court.

122 In­ser­ted by No I 2 of the FA of 14 Dec. 2018 on Im­prov­ing the Pro­tec­tion of Per­sons Af­fected by Vi­ol­ence, in force since 1 Ju­ly 2020 (AS 2019 2273; BBl 2017 7307).

123 SR 210

124 In­ser­ted by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Main­ten­ance) (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529). Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

125 Amended by No II of the FA of 25 Sept. 2015 (Pro­fes­sion­al Rep­res­ent­a­tion in En­force­ment Pro­ceed­ings), in force since 1 Jan. 2018 (AS 2016 3643; BBl 2014 8669).

126 SR 281.1

127 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

128 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

129 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 199 Waiver of conciliation

1 In fin­an­cial dis­putes with a value in dis­pute of at least 100,000 francs, the parties may mu­tu­ally agree to waive any at­tempt at con­cili­ation.

2 The plaintiff may uni­lat­er­ally waive con­cili­ation:

a.
if the de­fend­ant's re­gistered of­fice or dom­i­cile is abroad;
b.
if the de­fend­ant's res­id­ence is un­known;
c.
in dis­putes un­der the Gender Equal­ity Act of 24 March 1995130.

3In dis­putes for which a single can­ton­al in­stance has jur­is­dic­tion un­der Art­icles 5, 6 and 8, the plaintiff may bring the ac­tion dir­ectly be­fore the court.131

130 SR 151.1

131 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 200 Joint conciliation authorities

1 In dis­putes re­lat­ing to the ten­ancy and lease of res­id­en­tial and busi­ness prop­erty, the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity shall com­prise a chair­per­son and an equal num­ber of rep­res­ent­at­ives of each of the parties.

2 In dis­putes un­der the Gender Equal­ity Act of 24 March 1995132, the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity shall com­prise a chair­per­son and an equal num­ber of rep­res­ent­at­ives of the em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ee and of the pub­lic and private sec­tors; the genders must be equally rep­res­en­ted.

Art. 201 Tasks of the conciliation authority

1 The con­cili­ation au­thor­ity shall at­tempt to re­con­cile the parties in an in­form­al man­ner. If it helps to re­solve the dis­pute, a set­tle­ment may also in­clude con­ten­tious mat­ters that are not part of the pro­ceed­ings.

2 In the dis­putes men­tioned in Art­icle 200, the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity also provides leg­al ad­vice to the parties.

Chapter 2 Conciliation Proceedings

Art. 202 Initiation

1 Pro­ceed­ings are ini­ti­ated by an ap­plic­a­tion for con­cili­ation. The ap­plic­a­tion may be filed in the forms provided for by Art­icle 130 or or­ally for the re­cord be­fore the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity.

2 The ap­plic­a­tion for con­cili­ation must identi­fy the op­pos­ing party and in­clude the pray­ers for re­lief and a de­scrip­tion of the mat­ter in dis­pute.

3 The con­cili­ation au­thor­ity shall serve the op­pos­ing party with the ap­plic­a­tion im­me­di­ately and at the same time sum­mon the parties to a hear­ing.

4 In the dis­putes men­tioned in Art­icle 200, it may as an ex­cep­tion or­der the ex­change of writ­ten sub­mis­sions if it is con­sid­er­ing a de­cision pro­pos­al133 un­der Art­icle 210 or a de­cision un­der Art­icle 212.

133 Term in ac­cord­ance with No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697). This amend­ment has been made throughout the text.

Art. 203 Hearing

1 The hear­ing must take place with­in two months of re­ceipt of the ap­plic­a­tion or the end of the ex­change of writ­ten sub­mis­sions.

2 The con­cili­ation au­thor­ity shall con­sider the phys­ic­al re­cords presen­ted to it and may con­duct an in­spec­tion. If it is con­sid­er­ing a de­cision pro­pos­al un­der Art­icle 210 or a de­cision un­der Art­icle 212, it may also take oth­er evid­ence un­less this will sub­stan­tially delay the pro­ceed­ings.

3 The hear­ing is not pub­lic. In the dis­putes men­tioned in Art­icle 200, the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity may al­low full or par­tial pub­lic ac­cess to the hear­ings if there is a pub­lic in­terest.

4 With the con­sent of the parties, the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity may hold ad­di­tion­al hear­ings. The dur­a­tion of the pro­ceed­ings must not ex­ceed twelve months.

Art. 204 Personal appearance

1 The parties must ap­pear in per­son at the con­cili­ation hear­ing. If a leg­al en­tity is a party, a cor­por­ate body or a per­son who has a com­mer­cial power of at­tor­ney must ap­pear on its be­half who is au­thor­ised to con­duct the pro­ceed­ings and con­clude a set­tle­ment and who is fa­mil­i­ar with the sub­ject mat­ter of the dis­pute.134

2 The parties may be ac­com­pan­ied by leg­al agent or a con­fid­ant.135

3 The fol­low­ing per­sons are ex­empt from ap­pear­ing in per­son and may send a rep­res­ent­at­ive:

a.136
a per­son or en­tity dom­i­ciled or re­gistered out­side the can­ton or abroad;
b.
a per­son pre­ven­ted from ap­pear­ing due to ill­ness or age or for oth­er good cause;
c.
in the dis­putes men­tioned in Art­icle 243, a per­son who as an em­ploy­er or in­surer del­eg­ates an em­ploy­ee or who as the land­lord del­eg­ates the prop­erty man­ager, provided the per­son so del­eg­ated is au­thor­ised in writ­ing to con­clude a set­tle­ment.
d.137
any one of two or more plaintiffs or de­fend­ants, provided one of the parties is present and au­thor­ised to rep­res­ent the oth­er plaintiffs or de­fend­ants and to con­clude a set­tle­ment on their be­half.

4 The op­pos­ing party must be no­ti­fied in ad­vance of the rep­res­ent­a­tion.

134 Second sen­tence in­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

135 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

136 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

137 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 205 Confidentiality of proceedings

1 The state­ments of the parties may not be re­cor­ded or used sub­sequently in court pro­ceed­ings.

2 The use of the state­ments in the case of a de­cision pro­pos­al or a de­cision by the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity is re­served.

Art. 206 Default

1 If the plaintiff is in de­fault, the ap­plic­a­tion for con­cili­ation is deemed to have been with­drawn; the pro­ceed­ings shall be dis­missed as ground­less.

2 If the de­fend­ant is in de­fault, the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity shall pro­ceed as if no agree­ment has been achieved (Art. 209–212).

3 If both parties are in de­fault, the pro­ceed­ings shall be dis­missed as ground­less.

4An dis­cip­lin­ary fine of up to CHF 1,000 may be im­posed on a de­fault­ing party.138

138 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 207 Costs of conciliation proceedings

1 The costs of the con­cili­ation pro­ceed­ings are charged to the plaintiff:

a.
if the ap­plic­a­tion is with­drawn;
b.
if the pro­ceed­ings are dis­missed due to de­fault;
c.
if an au­thor­isa­tion to pro­ceed is gran­ted.

2 If an ac­tion is filed, the costs of the con­cili­ation pro­ceed­ings be­come part of the ac­tion.

Chapter 3 Agreement and Authorisation to Proceed

Art. 208 Agreement between the parties

1 If an agree­ment is reached, the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity shall place on re­cord the terms of the set­tle­ment, the ac­cept­ance of the claim or the un­con­di­tion­al with­draw­al of the ac­tion, and have the re­cord signed by the parties. Each party re­ceives a copy of the re­cord.

2 The set­tle­ment, ac­cept­ance or un­con­di­tion­al with­draw­al shall have the ef­fect of a bind­ing de­cision.

Art. 209 Authorisation to proceed

1 If no agree­ment is reached, the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity re­cords this fact and grants au­thor­isa­tion to pro­ceed:

a.
to the land­lord in cases where a rent in­crease is chal­lenged;
b.
to the plaintiff in all oth­er cases.

2 The au­thor­isa­tion to pro­ceed con­tains:

a.
the names and ad­dresses of the parties and their rep­res­ent­at­ives, if any;
b.
the plaintiff's pray­ers for re­lief, a de­scrip­tion of the mat­ter in dis­pute, and any coun­ter­claim;
c.
the date of the ini­ti­ation of the con­cili­ation pro­ceed­ings;
d.
the de­cision on the costs of the con­cili­ation pro­ceed­ings;
e.
the date of the au­thor­isa­tion to pro­ceed;
f.
the seal of the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity.

3 The plaintiff is en­titled to file the ac­tion in court with­in three months of au­thor­isa­tion to pro­ceed be­ing gran­ted.

4 The dead­line is 30 days in dis­putes over the ten­ancy and lease of res­id­en­tial and busi­ness prop­erty or the lease of ag­ri­cul­tur­al prop­erty.139

139 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Chapter 4 Decision Proposal and Decision

Art. 210 Decision proposal

1 The con­cili­ation au­thor­ity may sub­mit a de­cision pro­pos­al to the parties:140

a.
in dis­putes un­der the Gender Equal­ity Act of 24 March 1995141;
b.
in dis­putes re­lat­ing to the ten­ancy and lease of res­id­en­tial and busi­ness prop­erty or the lease of ag­ri­cul­tur­al prop­erty if they con­cern the de­pos­it of rent, pro­tec­tion against ab­us­ive rent, pro­tec­tion against ter­min­a­tion, or the ex­ten­sion of the rent­al re­la­tion­ship;
c.142
in oth­er fin­an­cial dis­putes, if the value in dis­pute does not ex­ceed 10,000 francs.

2 The de­cision pro­pos­al may con­tain a short state­ment of grounds; oth­er­wise, Art­icle 238 ap­plies by ana­logy.

140 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

141 SR 151.1

142 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 211 Effects

1 The de­cision pro­pos­al is deemed to be ac­cep­ted and has the ef­fect of a bind­ing de­cision if none of the parties re­jects it with­in 20 days of writ­ten no­ti­fic­a­tion to the parties. The re­jec­tion needs no state­ment of grounds.

2 After re­ceiv­ing the re­jec­tion, the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity shall grant au­thor­isa­tion to pro­ceed:

a.
to the re­ject­ing party in mat­ters un­der Art­icle 210 para­graph 1 let­ter b;
b.
to the plaintiff in all oth­er cases.

3 If in mat­ters un­der Art­icle 210 para­graph 1 let­ter b the ac­tion is not filed in time, the de­cision pro­pos­al is deemed to be ac­cep­ted and has the ef­fect of a bind­ing de­cision.

4 The parties must be ad­vised in the de­cision pro­pos­al of its ef­fects in ac­cord­ance with para­graphs 1 to 3 above.

Art. 212 Decision

1 In fin­an­cial dis­putes with a value in dis­pute not ex­ceed­ing 2,000 francs, the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity may render a de­cision on the mer­its if the plaintiff so re­quests.

2 The pro­ceed­ings are or­al.

3In the event of a de­cision pur­su­ant to para­graph 1, the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity shall de­term­ine the court costs and the party costs.143

143 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Title 2 Mediation

Art. 213 Mediation instead of conciliation

1 If all the parties so re­quest, the con­cili­ation pro­ceed­ings shall be re­placed by me­di­ation.

2 The re­quest must be made in the ap­plic­a­tion for con­cili­ation or at the con­cili­ation hear­ing.

3 The con­cili­ation au­thor­ity shall grant au­thor­isa­tion to pro­ceed if it is no­ti­fied by one of the parties that me­di­ation has failed.

Art. 214 Mediation during court proceedings

1 The court may re­com­mend me­di­ation to the parties at any time.

2 The parties may at any time make a joint re­quest for me­di­ation.

3 The court pro­ceed­ings re­main sus­pen­ded un­til the re­quest is with­drawn by one of the parties or un­til the court is no­ti­fied of the end of the me­di­ation.

Art. 215 Organisation and conduct of mediation

The parties are re­spons­ible for or­gan­ising and con­duct­ing the me­di­ation.

Art. 216 Relationship with court proceedings

1 Me­di­ation pro­ceed­ings are con­fid­en­tial and kept sep­ar­ate from the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity and the court.

2 The state­ments of the parties may not be used in court pro­ceed­ings.

Art. 217 Approval of an agreement

The parties may jointly re­quest that the agree­ment reached through me­di­ation be ap­proved. An ap­proved agree­ment has the same ef­fect as a leg­ally bind­ing de­cision.

Art. 218 Costs of mediation

1 The parties shall bear the costs of me­di­ation.

2 In mat­ters of child law, the parties are en­titled to cost-free me­di­ation if:144

a.
they do not have the ne­ces­sary fin­an­cial re­sources; and
b.
the court re­com­mends me­di­ation.

3 Can­ton­al law may provide for fur­ther ex­emp­tions from costs.

144 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Main­ten­ance), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529).

Title 3 Ordinary Proceedings

Chapter 1 Scope of Application

Art. 219

The pro­vi­sions of this Title ap­ply to or­din­ary pro­ceed­ings and, by ana­logy, to all oth­er pro­ceed­ings, un­less the law provides oth­er­wise.

Chapter 2 Exchange of Written Submissions and Preparation for the Main Hearing

Art. 220 Initiation

The or­din­ary pro­ceed­ings are ini­ti­ated by fil­ing the state­ment of claim.

Art. 221 Statement of claim

1 The state­ment of claim con­tains:

a.
the des­ig­na­tion of the parties and their rep­res­ent­at­ives, if any;
b.
the pray­ers for re­lief;
c.
a state­ment of the value in dis­pute;
d.
the al­leg­a­tions of fact;
e.
no­tice of the evid­ence offered for each al­leg­a­tion of fact;
f.
the date and sig­na­ture.

2 The fol­low­ing must be filed to­geth­er with the state­ment of claim:

a.
a power of at­tor­ney where a party is rep­res­en­ted;
b.
the au­thor­isa­tion to pro­ceed or the de­clar­a­tion that con­cili­ation is be­ing waived, if ap­plic­able;
c.
the avail­able phys­ic­al re­cords to be offered in evid­ence;
d.
a list of the evid­ence offered.

3 The state­ment of claim may in­clude a state­ment of leg­al grounds.

Art. 222 Statement of defence

1 The court shall serve the de­fend­ant with the state­ment of claim and at the same time set a dead­line for fil­ing a writ­ten state­ment of de­fence.

2 Art­icle 221 ap­plies to the state­ment of de­fence by ana­logy. The de­fend­ant must state therein which of the plaintiff's fac­tu­al al­leg­a­tions are ac­cep­ted and which are dis­puted.

3 The court may or­der that the state­ment of de­fence be lim­ited to spe­cif­ic is­sues or pray­ers (Art. 125).

4 It shall serve the plaintiff with the state­ment of de­fence.

Art. 223 Failure to file a statement of defence

1 If the state­ment of de­fence is not filed with­in the dead­line, the court shall al­low the de­fend­ant a short peri­od of grace.

2 If the state­ment of de­fence is not filed by the end of the peri­od of grace, the court shall make a fi­nal de­cision provided the court is in a po­s­i­tion to make a de­cision. Oth­er­wise, it shall sum­mon the parties to the main hear­ing.

Art. 224 Counterclaim

1 The de­fend­ant may file a coun­ter­claim in the state­ment of de­fence, provided the claim made by the de­fend­ant is sub­ject to the same type of pro­ced­ure as the main ac­tion.

1bisThe coun­ter­claim is also ad­miss­ible and shall be as­sessed to­geth­er with the main ac­tion in or­din­ary pro­ceed­ings if:

a.
the claim as­ser­ted is only to be as­sessed un­der the sim­pli­fied pro­ced­ure be­cause of the value in dis­pute, but the main ac­tion is to be as­sessed in the or­din­ary pro­ced­ure; or
b.
the coun­ter­claim seeks to es­tab­lish the non-ex­ist­ence of a right or leg­al re­la­tion­ship after only part of a claim arising from this right or leg­al re­la­tion­ship has been as­ser­ted in the main ac­tion and the sim­pli­fied pro­ced­ure there­fore only ap­plies be­cause of the value in dis­pute.145

2 If the value of the coun­ter­claim ex­ceeds the ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion of the court, the court shall trans­fer both claims to the court with great­er ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion.

3 If a coun­ter­claim is filed, the court shall set a dead­line for the plaintiff to file a writ­ten de­fence. The plaintiff may not an­swer the coun­ter­claim with a coun­ter­claim.

145 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 225 Second exchange of written submissions

The court shall or­der a second ex­change of writ­ten sub­mis­sions if the cir­cum­stances so re­quire.

Art. 226 Instruction hearing

1 The court may hold in­struc­tion hear­ings at any time dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings.

2 In­struc­tion hear­ings are held to dis­cuss the mat­ter in dis­pute in an in­form­al man­ner, to com­plete the facts, to at­tempt to reach an agree­ment and to pre­pare for the main hear­ing.

3 The court may take evid­ence.

Art. 227 Amendment of the statement of claim

1 An amend­ment of the state­ment of claim is ad­miss­ible if the new or amended claim is sub­ject to the same type of pro­ced­ure and:

a.
a fac­tu­al con­nec­tion ex­ists between the new or amended claim and the ori­gin­al claim; or
b.
if the op­pos­ing party con­sents to the amend­ment of the state­ment of claim.

2 If the value of the amended ac­tion ex­ceeds the ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion of the court, the court shall trans­fer the case to a court with great­er ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion.

3 A lim­it­a­tion of the ac­tion is per­mit­ted at any time; the seised court re­tains jur­is­dic­tion.

Chapter 3 Main Hearing

Art. 228 Opening party submissions

1 Fol­low­ing the open­ing of the main hear­ing, the parties shall present their ap­plic­a­tions and state the grounds there­for.

2 The court shall give them the op­por­tun­ity to make a reply and re­join­der.

Art. 229 New facts and evidence

1 If neither a second ex­change of writ­ten sub­mis­sions nor an in­struc­tion hear­ing has taken place, new facts and evid­ence may be presen­ted in the main hear­ing in the open­ing party sub­mis­sion in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 228 para­graph 1 without re­stric­tion.146

2 In oth­er cases, new facts and evid­ence may be sub­mit­ted by a dead­line set by the court or, in the ab­sence of such a dead­line, at the latest by the open­ing party sub­mis­sion in the main hear­ing in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 228 para­graph 1:

a.
if they oc­curred after the ex­change of writ­ten sub­mis­sions or after the last in­struc­tion hear­ing (prop­er nova); or
b.
if they ex­is­ted be­fore the close of the ex­change of writ­ten sub­mis­sions or be­fore the last in­struc­tion hear­ing but could not have been sub­mit­ted des­pite reas­on­able di­li­gence (im­prop­er nova).147

2bis After the open­ing party sub­mis­sions, new facts and evid­ence in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 2 let­ters a and b shall only be taken in­to ac­count if they are sub­mit­ted with­in the dead­line set by the court or, in the ab­sence of such a dead­line, at the latest at the next hear­ing.148

3 Where the court must es­tab­lish the facts ex of­fi­cio, new facts and new evid­ence may be ad­mit­ted un­til the court be­gins its de­lib­er­a­tions.

146 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

147 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

148 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 230 Amendment of the statement of claim

1 An amend­ment of the state­ment of claim at the main hear­ings is ad­miss­ible only if:

a.
the con­di­tions un­der Art­icle 227 para­graph 1 are ful­filled; and
b.149
the amend­ment is based on new facts or new evid­ence.

2 Art­icle 227 para­graphs 2 and 3 ap­ply.

149 Amended by No II of the FA of 25 Sept. 2015 (Pro­fes­sion­al Rep­res­ent­a­tion in En­force­ment Pro­ceed­ings), in force since 1 Jan. 2018 (AS 2016 3643; BBl 2014 8669).

Art. 231 Taking of evidence

After the party sub­mis­sions, the court takes the evid­ence.

Art. 232 Closing submissions

1 After the evid­ence is taken, the parties may com­ment on the res­ult of the evid­ence and on the mer­its of the case. The plaintiff speaks first. The court shall al­low the parties the op­por­tun­ity for a second round of sub­mis­sions.

2 The parties may jointly dis­pense with or­al clos­ing sub­mis­sions and re­quest the sub­mis­sion of writ­ten party sub­mis­sions. The court shall set a dead­line for the same.

Art. 233 Dispensing with the main hearing

The parties may jointly agree to dis­pense with the main hear­ing.

Art. 234 Failure to attend the main hearing

1 In the event that a party fails to at­tend the main hear­ing, the court shall con­sider the sub­mis­sions made in ac­cord­ance with this Code. Moreover, and sub­ject to Art­icle 153, it may rely on the rep­res­ent­a­tions of the party present and on the in­form­a­tion on file.

2 If both parties fail to at­tend, the pro­ceed­ings are dis­missed as ground­less. The court costs are shared equally between the parties.

Chapter 4 Records

Art. 235

1 The court keeps a re­cord of each hear­ing. This in­cludes in par­tic­u­lar:

a.
the place and time of the hear­ing;
b.
the com­pos­i­tion of the court;
c.
the pres­ence of the parties and their rep­res­ent­at­ives;
d.
the pray­ers for re­lief, ap­plic­a­tions and de­clar­a­tions made on re­cord by the parties;
e.
the court's rul­ings;
f.
the sig­na­ture of the clerk.

2 State­ments re­lat­ing to the facts of the case are placed on re­cord un­less they are already in­cluded in their writ­ten sub­mis­sions. In ad­di­tion, they may be re­cor­ded on tape, by video, or by oth­er ap­pro­pri­ate tech­nic­al means.

3 The court de­cides on ap­plic­a­tions for rec­ti­fic­a­tion of the re­cord.

Chapter 5 Decision

Art. 236 Final decision

1 If the court is in a po­s­i­tion to make a de­cision, it shall close the pro­ceed­ings by de­cid­ing not to con­sider the mer­its or by mak­ing a de­cision on the mer­its.

2 The court de­cides by ma­jor­ity.

3 At the re­quest of the suc­cess­ful party, the court shall or­der en­force­ment meas­ures.

Art. 237 Interim decision

1 The court may is­sue an in­ter­im de­cision if a high­er court could is­sue a con­trary de­cision that would put an im­me­di­ate end to the pro­ceed­ings and thereby al­low a sub­stan­tial sav­ing of time or costs.

2 The in­ter­im de­cision may be chal­lenged sep­ar­ately; it may not be chal­lenged later to­geth­er with the fi­nal de­cision.

Art. 238 Content

The de­cision con­tains:

a.
the des­ig­na­tion and the com­pos­i­tion of the court;
b
the place and date of the de­cision;
c.
the des­ig­na­tion of the parties and their rep­res­ent­at­ives;
d.
the con­clu­sions;
e.
the per­sons and au­thor­it­ies to be served with the de­cision;
f.
in­struc­tions on ap­pel­late rem­ed­ies un­less the parties have waived their right to seek the same;
g.150
the main fac­tu­al and leg­al grounds for the de­cision, if ap­plic­able;
g.
the grounds for the de­cision, if ap­plic­able;
h.
the seal of the court.

150 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 239 Notice to the parties and statement of grounds

1 The court shall nor­mally give no­tice of the de­cision to the parties without provid­ing a writ­ten state­ment of the grounds:151

a.
at the main hear­ing, by hand­ing over the writ­ten con­clu­sions to the parties and giv­ing an or­al sum­mary of the grounds;
b.152
by serving the parties promptly with the con­clu­sions.

2 A writ­ten state­ment of the grounds must be provided if one of the parties so re­quests with­in 10 days of the no­tice be­ing giv­en of the de­cision. If no state­ment of grounds is re­ques­ted, the parties are deemed to have waived their right to chal­lenge the de­cision by ap­peal or ob­jec­tion.

3 The above is sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions of the Fed­er­al Su­preme Court Act of 17 June 2005153 on no­tice of de­cisions that may be re­ferred to the Fed­er­al Su­preme Court.

151 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

152 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

153 SR 173.110

Art. 240 Notice and publication of the decision

If so provided for by the law or if it serves en­force­ment, the de­cision shall be pub­lished or no­tice shall be giv­en to the au­thor­it­ies and third parties con­cerned.

Chapter 6 Close of Proceedings without a Substantive Decision 154

154 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Improving Practicality and Law Enforcement), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 241 Settlement, acceptance, withdrawal

1 If no­tice of a set­tle­ment, ac­cept­ance of the claim or with­draw­al of the ac­tion is placed on re­cord in court, the parties must sign the re­cord.

2 A set­tle­ment, ac­cept­ance of the claim or with­draw­al of the ac­tion has the same ef­fect as a bind­ing de­cision.

3 The court shall dis­miss the pro­ceed­ings.

Art. 242 Proceedings made groundless for other reasons 155

If for any oth­er reas­ons the pro­ceed­ings end without a sub­stant­ive de­cision, the court shall is­sue a de­cision dis­miss­ing the pro­ceed­ings.

155 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Title 4 Simplified Proceedings

Art. 243 Scope of application

1 Sim­pli­fied pro­ceed­ings ap­ply in fin­an­cial dis­putes with a value in dis­pute not ex­ceed­ing 30,000 francs.

2 They ap­ply re­gard­less of the value in dis­pute in the case of:156

a.
dis­putes un­der the Gender Equal­ity Act of 24 March 1995157;
b.158
dis­putes con­cern­ing vi­ol­ence, threats or stalk­ing pur­su­ant to Art­icle 28b CC159 or con­cern­ing elec­tron­ic mon­it­or­ing pur­su­ant to Art­icle 28c CC;
c.
dis­putes con­cern­ing the ten­ancy and lease of res­id­en­tial and busi­ness prop­erty or the lease of ag­ri­cul­tur­al prop­erty if they con­cern the de­pos­it of rent, pro­tec­tion against ab­us­ive rent, pro­tec­tion against ter­min­a­tion, or the ex­ten­sion of the rent­al re­la­tion­ship;
d.160
dis­putes con­cern­ing the right of ac­cess to per­son­al data un­der Art­icle 25 FADP161;
e.
dis­putes con­cern­ing the Par­ti­cip­a­tion Act of 17 Decem­ber 1993162;
f.
dis­putes con­cern­ing in­sur­ance sup­ple­ment­ary to the so­cial health in­sur­ance un­der the Fed­er­al Act of 18 March 1994163 on Health In­sur­ance.

3 The sim­pli­fied pro­ceed­ings do not ap­ply to dis­putes be­fore the court of sole can­ton­al in­stance in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 5 and 8 and be­fore the Com­mer­cial Court in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 6.

156 Amended by No I 2 of the FA of 14 Dec. 2018 on Im­prov­ing the Pro­tec­tion of Per­sons Af­fected by Vi­ol­ence, in force since 1 Ju­ly 2020 (AS 2019 2273; BBl 2017 7307).

157 SR 151.1

158 Amended by No I 2 of the FA of 14 Dec. 2018 on Im­prov­ing the Pro­tec­tion of Per­sons Af­fected by Vi­ol­ence, in force since 1 Ju­ly 2020 (AS 2019 2273; BBl 2017 7307).

159 SR 210

160 Amended by An­nex 1 No II of the Data Pro­tec­tion Act of 25 Sept. 2020, in force since 1 Sept. 2023 (AS 2022 491; BBl 2017 6941).

161 SR 235.1

162 SR 822.14

163 SR 832.10

Art. 244 Simplified statement of claim

1 The state­ment of claim may be filed in the forms provided for by Art­icle 130 or or­ally on re­cord be­fore the court. It shall con­tain:

a.
the des­ig­na­tion of the parties;
b.
the pray­ers for re­lief;
c.
a de­scrip­tion of the mat­ter in dis­pute;
d.
a state­ment of the value in dis­pute, if ne­ces­sary;
e.
the date and sig­na­ture.

2 A state­ment of the grounds for the claim is not ne­ces­sary.

3 The fol­low­ing must be filed to­geth­er with the state­ment of claim:

a.
a power of at­tor­ney in case of rep­res­ent­a­tion;
b.
the au­thor­isa­tion to pro­ceed or the de­clar­a­tion that con­cili­ation has been waived;
c.
the avail­able phys­ic­al re­cords.

Art. 245 Summons to a hearing and statement of defence

1 If no grounds are stated for the ac­tion, the court shall serve the de­fend­ant with the state­ment of claim and sum­mon the parties to a hear­ing. If a party fails to at­tend the hear­ing, the court shall im­me­di­ately is­sue one fur­ther sum­mons to the hear­ing and in­form the parties of the con­sequences of any fur­ther de­fault on their part. The hear­ing shall take place with­in 30 days of the first hear­ing.164

2 If the grounds for the ac­tion are stated, the court shall first set a dead­line for the de­fend­ant to file a writ­ten re­sponse to the claim. If the court sum­mons the parties to the hear­ing, Art­icle 234 ap­plies mu­tatis mutandis in the event of de­fault.165

164 Second and third sen­tences in­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

165 Second sen­tence in­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 246 Procedural rulings

1 The court shall make the re­quired pro­ced­ur­al rul­ings so that if pos­sible the mat­ter may be con­cluded at the first hear­ing.

2 If the cir­cum­stances so re­quire, the court may or­der an ex­change of writ­ten sub­mis­sions and hold in­struc­tion hear­ings.

Art. 247 Establishment of facts

1 By ask­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate ques­tions, the court shall cause the parties to com­plete in­ad­equate sub­mis­sions and to in­dic­ate the evid­ence.

2 In the fol­low­ing cases, the court shall es­tab­lish the facts ex of­fi­cio:

a.
in mat­ters un­der Art­icle 243 para­graph 2;
b.
if the value in dis­pute does not ex­ceed 30,000 francs:
1.
in oth­er dis­putes con­cern­ing the ten­ancy and lease of res­id­en­tial and busi­ness prop­erty or the lease of ag­ri­cul­tur­al prop­erty,
2.
in oth­er em­ploy­ment law dis­putes.

Title 5 Summary Proceedings

Chapter 1 Scope of Application

Art. 248 Principle

Sum­mary pro­ceed­ings may be brought:

a.
in the cases des­ig­nated by law;
b.
for leg­al pro­tec­tion in clear cases;
c.
for court in­junc­tions;
d.
for in­ter­im meas­ures;
e.
for non-con­ten­tious mat­ters.

Art. 249 Civil Code

Sum­mary pro­ceed­ings may be brought in the fol­low­ing cases:166

a.167
Law of per­sons:
1.
fix­ing a time lim­it for leg­al trans­ac­tions by minors or per­sons sub­ject to a gen­er­al deputy­ship (Art. 19a CC168),
2.
right of reply (Art. 28l CC),
3.
de­clar­a­tion of pre­sumed death (Art. 35–38 CC),
4.
rec­ti­fic­a­tion of the civil status re­gistry (Art. 42 CC),
5.169
meas­ures in the event of or­gan­isa­tion­al de­fects of an as­so­ci­ation (Art. 69c CC);
b.170
...
c.
Law of suc­ces­sion:
1.
ac­cept­ance of an or­al will (Art. 507 CC),
2.
pro­vi­sion of se­cur­ity when in­her­it­ing from a per­son pre­sumed dead (Art. 546 CC),
3.
de­fer­ring the di­vi­sion of the es­tate and or­der­ing meas­ures to se­cure the claims of the co-heirs to­wards an in­solv­ent heir (Art. 604 para. 2 and 3 CC);
d.
Prop­erty law:
1.
meas­ures to pre­serve the value and the ser­vice­ab­il­ity of an ob­ject in joint prop­erty (Art. 647 para. 2 no. 1 CC),
2.
re­gis­tra­tion of real titles in case of ex­traordin­ary ad­verse pos­ses­sion (Art. 662 CC),
3.
dis­missal of an ob­jec­tion to the dis­pos­al of a con­domin­i­um unit (Art. 712c para. 3 CC),
4.
ap­point­ment and re­mov­al of the con­domin­i­um ad­min­is­trat­or (Art. 712q and 712r CC),
5.
pro­vi­sion­al re­gis­tra­tion of stat­utory mort­gages (Art. 712i, 712d, 779k and 837–839 CC),
6.
set­ting a dead­line to provide se­cur­ity and or­der the dis­pos­ses­sion in case of usu­fruct (Art. 760 and 762 CC),
7.
or­der­ing the li­quid­a­tion of debts in a usu­fructu­ary es­tate (Art. 766 CC),
8.
meas­ures in fa­vour of the cred­it­or to pro­tect the value of the real es­tate se­cur­ity in­terest (Art. 808 para. 1 and 2 and Art. 809–811 CC),
9.171
ap­point­ing an au­thor­ised agent on the is­sue of a mort­gage cer­ti­fic­ate (Art. 850 para. 3 CC),
10.172
can­cel­la­tion of a mort­gage cer­ti­fic­ate (Art. 856 and 865 CC),
11.
not­ing of re­stric­tions on powers of dis­pos­al and pro­vi­sion­al entries in dis­puted cases (Art. 960 para. 1 sec. 1, 961 para. 1 sec. 1 and 966 para. 2 CC).

166 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

167 Amended by An­nex 2 No 3 of the FA of 19 Dec. 2008, in force since 1 Jan. 2013 (AS 2010 1739, 2011 725; BBl 2006 72217001).

168 SR 210

169 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

170 Re­pealed by An­nex 2 No 3 of the FA of 19 Dec. 2008, with ef­fect from 1 Jan. 2013 (AS 2010 1739, 2011 725; BBl 2006 72217001).

171 Amended by No II 3 of the FA of 11 Dec. 2009 (Re­gister Mort­gage Cer­ti­fic­ate and oth­er amend­ments to Prop­erty Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2012 (AS 2011 4637; BBl 2007 5283).

172 Amended by No II 3 of the FA of 11 Dec. 2009 (Re­gister Mort­gage Cer­ti­fic­ate and oth­er amend­ments to Prop­erty Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2012 (AS 2011 4637; BBl 2007 5283).

Art. 250 Code of Obligations

Sum­mary pro­ceed­ings may be brought in the fol­low­ing cases:173

a.
Gen­er­al pro­vi­sions:
1.
de­pos­it of an ex­pired power of at­tor­ney with the court (Art. 36 para. 1 CO174),
2.
set­ting a reas­on­able dead­line to provide se­cur­ity (Art. 83 para. 2 CO),
3.
de­pos­it and sale of an ob­ject for the event of an ob­li­gee's de­fault (Art. 92 para. 2 and 93 para. 2 CO),
4.
au­thor­isa­tion for per­form­ance by a third party (Art. 98 CO),
5.
set­ting a time lim­it to per­form a con­tract (Art. 107 para. 1175 CO),
6.
de­pos­it of an value in dis­pute (Art. 168 para. 1 CO);
b.
Spe­cif­ic con­tracts:
1.
des­ig­na­tion of an ex­pert to veri­fy the cal­cu­la­tion of the profit share or com­mis­sions (Art. 322a para. 2 and 322c para. 2 CO),
2.
set­ting a dead­line to provide se­cur­ity in the event that a salary is at risk (Art. 337a CO),
3.
set­ting a time lim­it in the case of non-con­trac­tu­al per­form­ance of work (Art. 366 para. 2 CO),
4.
ap­point­ment of an ex­pert to in­spect the work (Art. 367 CO),
5.
set­ting a time lim­it for the pub­lic­a­tion of a new edi­tion of a lit­er­ary or artist­ic work (Art. 383 para. 3 CO),
6.
re­turn of an ob­ject held by an of­fi­cial re­ceiv­er (Art. 480 CO),
7.
as­sess­ing the ex­tent of cov­er by pledge in the case of joint and sev­er­al surety (Art. 496 para. 2 CO),
8.
aban­don­ment of debt en­force­ment pro­ceed­ings against the guar­ant­or fur­nish­ing real se­cur­ity (Art. 501 para. 2 CO),
9.
pro­vi­sion of se­cur­ity by the prin­cip­al debt­or and re­lease from li­ab­il­ity (Art. 506 CO);
c.
Com­pany law and the com­mer­cial re­gister:176
1.
pro­vi­sion­al with­draw­al of the au­thor­ity to rep­res­ent (Art 565 para. 2, 603 and 767 para. 1 CO),
2.
ap­point­ment of a joint rep­res­ent­at­ive (Art. 690 para. 1, 764 para. 2, 792 sec. 1 and 847 para. 4 CO),
3.
ap­point­ment, dis­missal and re­place­ment of li­quid­at­ors (Art. 583 para. 2, 619, 740, 741, 770, 826 para. 2 and 913 CO),
4.
sale at an over­all sale price and mod­al­it­ies of sale of im­mov­able prop­erty (Art. 585 para. 3 and 619 CO),
5.
ap­point­ment of an ex­pert to veri­fy the profit and loss ac­count and the bal­ance sheet of the lim­ited part­ner­ship (Art. 600 para. 3 CO),
6.177
meas­ures in the event of de­fects in the or­gan­isa­tion of the com­pany or co-op­er­at­ive (Art. 731b, 819 and 908 OR),
7.178
or­der­ing the dis­clos­ure of in­form­a­tion to cred­it­ors, share­hold­ers and mem­bers of a lim­ited li­ab­il­ity com­pany and to mem­bers of a co­oper­at­ive (Art. 697b, 802 para. 4, 857 para. 3 and 958e CO),
8.179
a spe­cial in­vest­ig­a­tion (Art. 697c–697hbis CO),
9.180
con­ven­ing a gen­er­al meet­ing, put­ting an item on the agenda, tabling mo­tions with short ex­plan­a­tions in the in­vit­a­tion to the gen­er­al meet­ing (Art. 699 para. 5, 699b para. 4, 805 para. 5 nos 2 and 3 and 881 para. 3 CO),
10.181 des­ig­na­tion of a rep­res­ent­at­ive of the com­pany or the co­oper­at­ive in the event of a res­ol­u­tion of the gen­er­al meet­ing be­ing chal­lenged by the man­age­ment (Art. 706a para. 2, 808c and 891 para. 1 CO),
11.182
12.
de­pos­it of amounts of claims in case of li­quid­a­tion (Art. 744, 770, 826 para. 2 and 913 CO),
13.183
re­mov­al of the dir­ect­ors and aud­it­ors of a co­oper­at­ive (Art. 890 para. 2 CO),
14.184 re­in­state­ment of a de­leted leg­al en­tity in the com­mer­cial re­gister (Art. 935 CO),
15.185
or­der­ing the dis­sol­u­tion of the com­pany and its li­quid­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions on bank­ruptcy (Art. 731b, 819 und 908 CO),
16.186
de­le­tion of a leg­al en­tity (Art. 934 para. 3 CO);
d.
Se­cur­it­ies law:
1.
can­cel­la­tion of se­cur­it­ies (Art. 981 CO),
2.
pro­hib­i­tion of pay­ing a bill of ex­change and de­pos­it of the amount pay­able un­der the bill (Art. 1072 CO),
3.
lapse of the au­thor­ity con­ferred by the cred­it­ors meet­ing on the rep­res­ent­at­ive of the com­munity of cred­it­ors (Art. 1162 para. 4 CO),
4.
con­ven­ing a cred­it­ors meet­ing on the ap­plic­a­tion by the bond cred­it­ors (Art. 1165 para. 3 and 4 CO).

173 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

174 SR 220

175 Cor­rec­ted by the Fed­er­al As­sembly Draft­ing Com­mit­tee (Art. 58 para. 1 ParlA – SR 171.10).

176 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 17 March 2017 (Com­mer­cial Re­gister Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 957; BBl 2015 3617).

177 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

178 Amended by An­nex No 3 of the FA of 19 June 2020 (Com­pany Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2023 (AS 2020 4005; 2022 109; BBl 2017 399).

179 Amended by An­nex No 3 of the FA of 19 June 2020 (Com­pany Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2023 (AS 2020 4005; 2022 109; BBl 2017 399).

180 Amended by An­nex No 3 of the FA of 19 June 2020 (Com­pany Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2023 (AS 2020 4005; 2022 109; BBl 2017 399).

181 Amended by An­nex No 3 of the FA of 19 June 2020 (Com­pany Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2023 (AS 2020 4005; 2022 109; BBl 2017 399).

182 Re­pealed by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), with ef­fect from 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

183 Amended by No II of the FA of 25 Sept. 2015 (Pro­fes­sion­al Rep­res­ent­a­tion in En­force­ment Pro­ceed­ings), in force since 1 Jan. 2018 (AS 2016 3643; BBl 2014 8669).

184 In­ser­ted by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 17 March 2017 (Com­mer­cial Re­gister Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 957; BBl 2015 3617).

185 In­ser­ted by An­nex No 3 of the FA of 19 June 2020 (Com­pany Law), in force since 1 Jan. 2023 (AS 2020 4005; 2022 109, 110; BBl 2017 399).

186 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; 2024 235; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 251 Debt Enforcement and Bankruptcy Act of 11 April 1889

Sum­mary pro­ceed­ings may be brought in the fol­low­ing cases:187

a.
de­cisions made in mat­ters of clear­ance to pro­ceed, bank­ruptcy, at­tach­ment and com­pos­i­tion;
b.
ad­mis­sion of a be­lated ob­jec­tion (Art. 77 para. 3 DEBA188) and of the ob­jec­tion in the en­force­ment of bills of ex­change (Art. 181 DEBA);
c.
re­voc­a­tion or sus­pen­sion of the debt col­lec­tion pro­ceed­ings (Art. 85 DEBA);
d.
de­cision on the ex­ist­ence of new as­sets (Art. 265a para. 1–3 DEBA);
e.
or­der­ing the sep­ar­a­tion of prop­erty (Art. 68b DEBA).

187 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

188 SR 281.1

Art. 251a Federal Act of 18 December 1987 on Private International Law 189

1 Sum­mary pro­ceed­ings may be brought in par­tic­u­lar in the fol­low­ing cases:190

a.
ap­point­ing and re­pla­cing mem­bers of an ar­bit­ral tribunal (Art. 179 para. 2–5 PILA191);
b.
chal­len­ging and re­mov­ing a mem­ber of an ar­bit­ral tribunal (Art. 180a para. 2 and Art. 180b para. 2 PILA);
c.
ob­tain­ing as­sist­ance from the state court in en­for­cing in­ter­im meas­ures (Art. 183 para. 2 PILA) and in tak­ing evid­ence (Art. 184 para. 2 PILA);
d.
ob­tain­ing oth­er forms of as­sist­ance from the state court in the ar­bit­ra­tion pro­ceed­ings (Art. 185 PILA);
e.
ob­tain­ing as­sist­ance from the state court in the case of for­eign ar­bit­ra­tion pro­ceed­ings (Art. 185a PILA);
f.
de­pos­it­ing the award and cer­ti­fy­ing its en­force­ab­il­ity (Art. 193 PILA);
g.
ac­know­ledging and ex­ecut­ing for­eign awards (Art. 194 PILA).

2 Can­ton­al law may provide that, at the re­quest of all parties, Eng­lish is used as the lan­guage of pro­ceed­ings if Eng­lish is used for the ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment or ar­bit­ra­tion clause or as the lan­guage of pro­ceed­ings in the ar­bit­ra­tion.192

189 In­ser­ted by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

190 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

191 SR 291

192 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Chapter 2 Procedure and Decision

Art. 252 Application

1 An ap­plic­a­tion must be made to ini­ti­ate pro­ceed­ings.

2 The ap­plic­a­tion must be filed in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 130; in simple or ur­gent cases, it may be filed or­ally on re­cord.

Art. 253 Answer

If the re­quest does not seem ob­vi­ously in­ad­miss­ible or un­foun­ded, the court shall give the op­pos­ing party the op­por­tun­ity to com­ment or­ally or in writ­ing.

Art. 254 Evidence

1 Proof must be provided in the form of phys­ic­al re­cords.

2 Oth­er evid­ence is ad­miss­ible in the fol­low­ing cases:

a.
if the tak­ing of evid­ence does not sub­stan­tially delay the pro­ceed­ings;
b.
if re­quired by the pur­pose of the pro­ceed­ings; or
c.
if the court must es­tab­lish the facts ex of­fi­cio.

Art. 255 Principle of ex-officio investigation

The court es­tab­lishes the facts ex of­fi­cio:

a.
in mat­ters of bank­ruptcy and com­pos­i­tion;
b.
in non-con­ten­tious mat­ters.

Art. 256 Decision

1 The court may dis­pense with a hear­ing and de­cide on the basis of the case files, un­less the law provides oth­er­wise.

2 If an or­der in a non-con­ten­tious mat­ter ret­ro­spect­ively proves in­cor­rect, it may be can­celled or mod­i­fied ex of­fi­cio or on re­quest, provided this does not con­flict with the law or the prin­ciple of leg­al cer­tainty.

Chapter 3 Clear Cases

Art. 257

1 The court shall de­clare the case ad­miss­ible un­der the sum­mary pro­ced­ure where:

a.
the facts are un­dis­puted or im­me­di­ately prov­able; and
b.
the leg­al situ­ation is clear.

2 The case is sub­ject to the prin­ciple of ex-of­fi­cio as­sess­ment.

3 If the case is not ad­miss­ible un­der the fore­go­ing pro­ced­ure, the court does not con­sider the case.

Chapter 4 Court Injunction

Art. 258 Principle

1 Any per­son who holds title to im­mov­able prop­erty may re­quest the court to pro­hib­it any tres­pass on the prop­erty and, on re­quest, to im­pose a fine not ex­ceed­ing 2,000 francs on any per­son who vi­ol­ates the in­junc­tion. The in­junc­tion may be tem­por­ary or in­def­in­ite.

2 The ap­plic­ant must prove his or her real title by means of phys­ic­al re­cords and cred­ibly show a cur­rent or im­min­ent tres­pass.

Art. 259 Notice

No­tice of the in­junc­tion must be pub­lished and af­fixed to the prop­erty in an eas­ily vis­ible sign.

Art. 260 Opposition

1 Any per­son who is not pre­pared to re­cog­nise the in­junc­tion may file an op­pos­i­tion with the court with­in 30 days of no­tice there­of be­ing giv­en by pub­lic­a­tion and at the prop­erty. The op­pos­i­tion needs no state­ment of grounds.

2 Op­pos­i­tion renders the in­junc­tion in­ef­fect­ive to­wards the op­pos­ing per­son. In or­der to val­id­ate the in­junc­tion, an ac­tion must be filed in court.

Chapter 5 Interim Measures and Protective Letter

Section 1 Interim Measures

Art. 261 Principle

1 The court shall or­der the in­ter­im meas­ures re­quired provided the ap­plic­ant shows cred­ibly that:

a.
a right to which he or she is en­titled has been vi­ol­ated or a vi­ol­a­tion is an­ti­cip­ated; and
b.
the vi­ol­a­tion threatens to cause not eas­ily re­par­able harm to the ap­plic­ant.

2 The court may re­frain from or­der­ing in­ter­im meas­ures if the op­pos­ing party provides ap­pro­pri­ate se­cur­ity.

Art. 262 Subject matter

The court may or­der any in­ter­im meas­ure suit­able to pre­vent the im­min­ent harm, in par­tic­u­lar:

a.
an in­junc­tion;
b.
an or­der to rem­edy an un­law­ful situ­ation;
c.
an or­der to a re­gister au­thor­ity or to a third party;
d.
per­form­ance in kind;
e.
the pay­ment of a sum of money in the cases provided by the law.

Art. 263 Measures ordered before the action becomes pending

If the prin­cip­al ac­tion is not yet pending, the court shall set a dead­line with­in which the ap­plic­ant must file his or her ac­tion, sub­ject to the ordered meas­ure be­com­ing auto­mat­ic­ally in­ef­fect­ive in the event of de­fault.

Art. 264 Security and damages

1 The court may make the in­ter­im meas­ure con­di­tion­al on the pay­ment of se­cur­ity by the ap­plic­ant if it is an­ti­cip­ated that the meas­ures may cause loss or dam­age to the op­pos­ing party.

2 The ap­plic­ant is li­able for any loss or dam­age caused by un­jus­ti­fied in­ter­im meas­ures. If the ap­plic­ant proves, however, that he or she ap­plied for the meas­ures in good faith, the court may re­duce the dam­ages or en­tirely re­lease the ap­plic­ant from li­ab­il­ity.

3 The se­cur­ity must be re­leased once it is es­tab­lished that no ac­tion for dam­ages will be filed; in case of un­cer­tainty, the court shall set a dead­line for fil­ing the ac­tion.

Art. 265 Ex-parte interim measures

1 In cases of spe­cial ur­gency, and in par­tic­u­lar where there is a risk that the en­force­ment of the meas­ure will be frus­trated, the court may or­der the in­ter­im meas­ure im­me­di­ately and without hear­ing the op­pos­ing party.

2 At the same time, the court shall sum­mon the parties to a hear­ing, which must take place im­me­di­ately, or set a dead­line for the op­pos­ing party to com­ment in writ­ing. Hav­ing heard the op­pos­ing party, the court shall de­cide on the ap­plic­a­tion im­me­di­ately.

3 Be­fore or­der­ing in­ter­im meas­ures, the court may ex of­fi­cio or­der the ap­plic­ant to provide se­cur­ity.

Art. 266 Measures against the media

The court may or­der in­ter­im meas­ures against peri­od­ic­ally pub­lished me­dia only if:

a.193
an ex­ist­ing or im­min­ent vi­ol­a­tion of rights is caus­ing or may cause the ap­plic­ant a par­tic­u­larly ser­i­ous dis­ad­vant­age;
a.
the im­min­ent vi­ol­a­tion of rights may cause the ap­plic­ant a par­tic­u­larly ser­i­ous dis­ad­vant­age;
b.
the vi­ol­a­tion is ob­vi­ously not jus­ti­fied; and
c.
the meas­ure does not seem dis­pro­por­tion­ate.

193 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 267 Enforcement

The court that or­ders the in­ter­im meas­ure shall also take the re­quired en­force­ment meas­ures.

Art. 268 Modification and revocation

1 The in­ter­im meas­ures may be mod­i­fied or re­voked if the cir­cum­stances have changed or if the meas­ures have proven un­jus­ti­fied.

2 The meas­ures be­come auto­mat­ic­ally in­ef­fect­ive when the de­cision on the mer­its comes in­to force. The court may or­der their con­tinu­ation if it serves the en­force­ment of the de­cision or if the law so provides.

Art. 269 Reservation

The fol­low­ing pro­vi­sions are re­served:

a.
the pro­vi­sions of the DEBA194 on pro­tect­ive meas­ures when en­for­cing mon­et­ary claims;
b.
the pro­vi­sions of the CC195 on pro­tect­ive meas­ures in suc­ces­sion;
c.
the pro­vi­sions of the Pat­ents Act of 25 June 1954196 on the ac­tion re­lat­ing to the grant­ing of a li­cence.

Section 2 Protective Letter

Art. 270

1 Any per­son who has reas­on to be­lieve that an ex-parte in­ter­im meas­ure, an at­tach­ment un­der Art­icles 271–281 DEBA197 or any oth­er meas­ure against him or her will be ap­plied for without pri­or hear­ing, may set out his or her po­s­i­tion in ad­vance by fil­ing a pro­tect­ive let­ter.198

2 The op­pos­ing party shall be served with the pro­tect­ive let­ter only if he or she ini­ti­ates the rel­ev­ant pro­ceed­ings.

3 The pro­tect­ive let­ter be­comes in­ef­fect­ive six months after it is filed.

197 SR 281.1

198 Amended by Art. 3 No 1 of the FD of 11 Dec. 2009 (Ad­op­tion and Im­ple­ment­a­tion of the Lugano Con­ven­tion), in force since 1 Jan. 2011 (AS 2010 5601; BBl 2009 1777).

Title 6 Special Proceedings in Marital Law

Chapter 1 Summary Proceedings

Art. 271 Scope of Application

Sub­ject to Art­icles 272 and 273, sum­mary pro­ced­ure ap­plies to meas­ures for pro­tec­tion of the mar­it­al uni­on, and in par­tic­u­lar to:

a.
the meas­ures un­der Art­icles 172–179 CC199;
b.
the ex­ten­sion of a spouse's power to rep­res­ent the mar­it­al uni­on (Art. 166 para. 2 sec. 1 CC);
c.
the au­thor­isa­tion of a spouse to dis­pose of the fam­ily home (Art. 169 para. 2 CC);
d.
the duty of a spouse to provide in­form­a­tion on his or her in­come, as­sets and debts (Art. 170 para. 2 CC);
e.
the sep­ar­a­tion of prop­erty and the re­in­state­ment of the pri­or prop­erty re­gime (Art. 185, 187 para. 2, 189 and 191 CC);
f.
the ob­lig­a­tion of spouses to co­oper­ate in draw­ing up an in­vent­ory (Art. 195a CC);
g.
the de­term­in­a­tion of pay­ment dead­lines and the pro­vi­sion of se­cur­ity between the spouses out­side pro­ceed­ings on the di­vi­sion of the mar­it­al prop­erty (Art. 203 para. 2, 218, 235 para. 2 and 250 para. 2 CC);
h.
the spouse's con­sent to the re­nun­ci­ation or ac­cept­ance of an in­her­it­ance (Art. 230 para. 2 CC);
i.
dir­ec­tions to debt­ors and the pro­vi­sion of se­cur­ity for post-mat­ri­mo­ni­al main­ten­ance out­side pro­ceed­ings on post-mat­ri­mo­ni­al main­ten­ance (Art. 132 CC).

Art. 272 Principle of ex-officio investigation

The court es­tab­lishes the facts ex of­fi­cio.

Art. 273 Procedure

1 The court shall hold a hear­ing. It may dis­pense with the hear­ing only if the parties' sub­mis­sions in­dic­ate that the facts are clear or un­dis­puted.

2 The parties must ap­pear in per­son if the court does not ex­empt them for reas­ons of ill­ness or age or for oth­er good cause.

3 The court shall at­tempt to find an agree­ment between the parties.

Chapter 2 Divorce Proceedings

Section 1 General Provisions

Art. 274 Initiation

Di­vorce pro­ceed­ings are ini­ti­ated by sub­mit­ting a joint re­quest for di­vorce or by fil­ing an ac­tion for di­vorce.

Art. 275 Suspension of the common household

Each spouse has the right to sus­pend the com­mon house­hold for the dur­a­tion of the di­vorce pro­ceed­ings.

Art. 276 Interim measures

1 The court shall or­der the ne­ces­sary in­ter­im meas­ures. The pro­vi­sions con­cern­ing meas­ures for pro­tec­tion of the mar­it­al uni­on ap­ply by ana­logy.

2 In­ter­im meas­ures ordered by the court for the pro­tec­tion of the mar­it­al uni­on shall be con­tin­ued. The di­vorce court has jur­is­dic­tion to modi­fy or re­voke them.

3 The court may also or­der in­ter­im meas­ures after the dis­sol­u­tion of the mar­riage if pro­ceed­ings re­lat­ing to the ef­fects of the di­vorce con­tin­ue.

Art. 277 Establishment of facts

1 The prin­ciple of pro­duc­tion of evid­ence ap­plies in pro­ceed­ings con­cern­ing the dis­sol­u­tion of the mar­it­al prop­erty re­gime and post-mar­it­al main­ten­ance.

2 If the court es­tab­lishes that phys­ic­al re­cords re­quired to de­cide the fin­an­cial con­sequences of the di­vorce are miss­ing, it shall or­der the parties to pro­duce such doc­u­ments.

3 The court shall oth­er­wise es­tab­lish the facts ex of­fi­cio.

Art. 278 Personal appearance

The parties must ap­pear in per­son at the hear­ing un­less the court ex­empts them for reas­ons of ill­ness or age or for oth­er good cause.

Art. 279 Approval of the agreement

1 The court shall ap­prove the agree­ment on the ef­fects of the di­vorce if it is per­suaded that the spouses have con­cluded the agree­ment of their own vo­li­tion and after care­ful re­flec­tion, and that the agree­ment is clear, com­plete and not mani­festly in­equit­able; the pro­vi­sions on oc­cu­pa­tion­al pen­sions are re­served.

2 The agree­ment is val­id only when it has been ap­proved by the court. It must be in­cluded in the con­clu­sions to the de­cision.

Art. 280 Agreement on occupational pension benefits

1 The court shall ap­prove an agree­ment on the equit­able di­vi­sion of claims to the oc­cu­pa­tion­al pen­sions provided:200

a.201
the spouses have agreed on the equit­able di­vi­sion and its mod­al­it­ies;
b.202
the spouses provide con­firm­a­tion from the oc­cu­pa­tion­al pen­sion schemes con­cerned on the prac­tic­ab­il­ity of the ar­range­ment and of the amount of the en­ti­tle­ments or pen­sions; and
c.
the court is per­suaded that the agree­ment con­forms to the law.

2 The court shall in­form the pen­sion schemes con­cerned about the rel­ev­ant parts of the fi­nal de­cision, in­clud­ing the de­tails re­quired in or­der to trans­fer of the agreed amounts. The de­cision is bind­ing on the pen­sion schemes.

3 If the spouses agree not to di­vide their pen­sions equally or if they de­cline to di­vide their pen­sions, the court shall ex­am­ine ex of­fi­cio wheth­er ap­pro­pri­ate fin­an­cial se­cur­ity for age or in­valid­ity re­mains guar­an­teed.203

200 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2015 (Equit­able Di­vi­sion of Pen­sions on Di­vorce), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 2313; BBl 2013 4887).

201 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2015 (Equit­able Di­vi­sion of Pen­sions on Di­vorce), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 2313; BBl 2013 4887).

202 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2015 (Equit­able Di­vi­sion of Pen­sions on Di­vorce), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 2313; BBl 2013 4887).

203 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2015 (Equit­able Di­vi­sion of Pen­sions on Di­vorce), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 2313; BBl 2013 4887).

Art. 281 Failure to agree on an equitable division of pensions 204

1 In the ab­sence of an agree­ment, and if the rel­ev­ant en­ti­tle­ments and pen­sions have been de­term­ined, the court shall de­cide on the ap­por­tion­ment of the shares ac­cord­ing to the pro­vi­sions of the CC205 and the Ves­ted Be­ne­fits Act of 17 Decem­ber 1993206 (VBA) (Art. 122 and 123 CC in con­junc­tion with Art. 22–22f VBA), de­term­ine the amount to be trans­ferred and set a dead­line for the pen­sion funds con­cerned to con­firm the prac­tic­ab­il­ity of the planned ar­range­ment.207

2 Art­icle 280 para­graph 2 ap­plies by ana­logy.

3 In oth­er cases in which no agree­ment is reached, after the fi­nal de­cision on the ap­por­tion­ment of the shares, the court shall refer the mat­ter to the com­pet­ent court un­der the VBA, ad­vising it in par­tic­u­lar of:208

a.
the de­cision on the ap­por­tion­ment of the shares;
b.
the date of mar­riage and the date of di­vorce;
c.209
the pen­sion funds against which the spouses are likely to have en­ti­tle­ments, and the amount of these en­ti­tle­ments;
d.210
the oc­cu­pa­tion­al pen­sion funds that pay the spouses pen­sions, the amount of those pen­sions and the shares of the pen­sions paid.

204 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2015 (Equit­able Di­vi­sion of Pen­sions on Di­vorce), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 2313; BBl 2013 4887).

205 SR 210

206 SR 831.42

207 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2015 (Equit­able Di­vi­sion of Pen­sions on Di­vorce), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 2313; BBl 2013 4887).

208 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2015 (Equit­able Di­vi­sion of Pen­sions on Di­vorce), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 2313; BBl 2013 4887).

209 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2015 (Equit­able Di­vi­sion of Pen­sions on Di­vorce), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 2313; BBl 2013 4887).

210 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2015 (Equit­able Di­vi­sion of Pen­sions on Di­vorce), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 2313; BBl 2013 4887).

Art. 282 Maintenance payments

1 The agree­ment or de­cision fix­ing the main­ten­ance pay­ments must in­dic­ate:

a.
the por­tions of the in­come and the as­sets of each spouse that have been taken in­to ac­count;
b.
the amount al­loc­ated to the spouse and to each child;
c.
the amount ne­ces­sary to as­sure the prop­er main­ten­ance of the en­titled spouse, if a sub­sequent in­crease in the pen­sion is re­served;
d.
wheth­er and to what ex­tent the pen­sion will be ad­jus­ted to changes in liv­ing costs.

2 If the main­ten­ance pay­ment for the spouse is chal­lenged, the ap­pel­late court may also re­as­sess the main­ten­ance pay­ments for the chil­dren, even if they are not chal­lenged.

Art. 283 Unity of decision

1 The court rules on the ef­fects of the di­vorce in the di­vorce judg­ment.

2 Where there is good cause, the di­vi­sion of the mar­it­al prop­erty may be re­ferred to sep­ar­ate pro­ceed­ings.

3 The equit­able di­vi­sion of claims to oc­cu­pa­tion­al pen­sion as­sets may be re­ferred in their en­tirety to sep­ar­ate pro­ceed­ings if claims to pen­sion as­sets abroad are in­volved and a de­cision can be ob­tained in the state con­cerned on their equit­able di­vi­sion. The court may sus­pend the sep­ar­ate pro­ceed­ings un­til the for­eign de­cision has been taken; it may already de­term­ine the shares on di­vi­sion.211

211 In­ser­ted by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2015 (Equit­able Di­vi­sion of Pen­sions on Di­vorce), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 2313; BBl 2013 4887).

Art. 284 Adjusting the binding effects of divorce

1 The con­di­tions and the ma­ter­i­al jur­is­dic­tion for ad­just­ing a de­cision are gov­erned by Art­icles 124epara­graph 2, 129 and 134 CC212.213

2 Non-con­ten­tious modi­fic­a­tions may be agreed in a simple writ­ten agree­ment, sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions of the CC con­cern­ing mat­ters re­lat­ing to chil­dren (Art. 134 para. 3 CC).

3 The pro­vi­sions on the di­vorce ac­tion ap­ply by ana­logy to the pro­ceed­ings for con­ten­tious modi­fic­a­tions.

212 SR 210

213 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2015 (Equit­able Di­vi­sion of Pen­sions on Di­vorce), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 2313; BBl 2013 4887).

Section 2 Divorce at Joint Request

Art. 285 Submission in the case of comprehensive agreement

The joint sub­mis­sion of the spouses con­tains:

a.
the names and ad­dresses of the spouses and de­tails of their rep­res­ent­at­ives, if any;
b.
the joint di­vorce re­quest;
c.
the com­pre­hens­ive agree­ment on the ef­fects of the di­vorce;
d.
the joint ap­plic­a­tions with re­gard to the chil­dren;
e.
the ne­ces­sary doc­u­ments;
f.
the date and sig­na­tures.

Art. 286 Submission in the case of partial agreement

1 In their sub­mis­sion, the spouses must ap­ply for the court to rule on the ef­fects of di­vorce on which they have not reached an agree­ment.

2 Each spouse may sub­mit his or her jus­ti­fied ap­plic­a­tion on the ef­fects of the di­vorce that are not part of the agree­ment.

3 Oth­er­wise Art­icle 285 ap­plies by ana­logy.

Art. 287 Hearing of the parties 214

If the sub­mis­sion is com­plete, the court shall sum­mon the parties to a hear­ing. The con­duct of the hear­ing is gov­erned by the pro­vi­sions of the CC215.

214 Amended by No II of the FA of 25 Sept. 2009 (Peri­od for re­flec­tion in Di­vorce Pro­ceed­ings on Joint Ap­plic­a­tion), in force since 1 Jan. 2011 (AS 2010 2811861; BBl 2008 19591975).

215 SR 210

Art. 288 Continuation of the proceedings and decision

1 If the con­di­tions for a di­vorce at joint re­quest are ful­filled, the court shall de­cree the di­vorce and ap­prove the agree­ment.

2 If the ef­fects of the di­vorce re­main dis­puted, the pro­ceed­ings shall be con­tin­ued with re­gard to these ef­fects with the parties as ad­versar­ies.216 The sim­pli­fied pro­ced­ure ap­plies.217 The court may as­sign the roles of plaintiff and de­fend­ant.218

3 If the re­quire­ments for di­vorce at joint re­quest are not met, the court shall re­ject the joint re­quest for di­vorce and at the same time set a dead­line to each spouse for the fil­ing of a di­vorce ac­tion.219 The pro­ceed­ings re­main pending dur­ing this peri­od and any in­ter­im meas­ures con­tin­ue to ap­ply.

216 Amended by No II of the FA of 25 Sept. 2009 (Peri­od for re­flec­tion in Di­vorce Pro­ceed­ings on Joint Ap­plic­a­tion), in force since 1 Jan. 2011 (AS 2010 2811861; BBl 2008 19591975).

217 Second sen­tence in­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prove­ment of Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

218 Ori­gin­ally the second sen­tence.

219 Amended by No II of the FA of 25 Sept. 2009 (Peri­od for re­flec­tion in Di­vorce Pro­ceed­ings on Joint Ap­plic­a­tion), in force since 1 Jan. 2011 (AS 2010 2811861; BBl 2008 19591975).

Art. 289 Appellate remedies

The di­vorce may only be con­tested by ap­peal on the grounds of lack of in­tent.

Section 3 Action for Divorce

Art. 290 Filing the action

An ac­tion for di­vorce may be filed without a writ­ten state­ment of the grounds. It shall con­tain:

a.
the names and ad­dresses of the spouses and the des­ig­na­tion of their rep­res­ent­at­ives, if any;
b.
the pray­er for re­lief re­quest­ing the di­vorce and an in­dic­a­tion of the grounds (Art. 114 or 115 CC220);
c.
the pray­ers for re­lief con­cern­ing the fin­an­cial ef­fects of the di­vorce;
d.
the pray­ers for re­lief con­cern­ing the chil­dren;
e.
the ne­ces­sary doc­u­ments;
f.
the date and sig­na­tures.

Art. 291 Conciliation hearing

1 The court shall sum­mon the parties to a hear­ing and es­tab­lish wheth­er there are grounds for di­vorce.

2 If grounds for di­vorce are es­tab­lished, the court shall at­tempt to se­cure an agree­ment between the spouses with re­gard to the ef­fects of the di­vorce.

3 If grounds for di­vorce are not es­tab­lished or if an agree­ment can­not be reached, the court shall give the plaintiff the op­por­tun­ity to state or add to the grounds. The pro­ceed­ings shall be con­tin­ued with the parties as ad­versar­ies. The sim­pli­fied pro­ced­ure ap­plies.221

221 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 292 Change to divorce at joint request

1 The pro­ceed­ings shall con­tin­ue ac­cord­ing to the pro­vi­sions on di­vorce at joint re­quest if the spouses:

a.
have been sep­ar­ated for less than two years at the time the case be­comes pending; and
b.
agree to the di­vorce.

2 If the grounds for di­vorce claimed are es­tab­lished, no change to pro­ceed­ings for di­vorce at joint re­quest is made.

Art. 293 Amendment of the action

A di­vorce ac­tion may be changed to a sep­ar­a­tion ac­tion at any time pri­or to the court be­gin­ning its de­lib­er­a­tions on the de­cision.

Section 4 Actions for Annulment and Separation

Art. 294

1 The pro­ced­ure for ac­tions for an­nul­ment and for sep­ar­a­tion is gov­erned by ana­logy by the pro­vi­sions on ac­tions for di­vorce.

2 An ac­tion for sep­ar­a­tion may be trans­formed in­to an ac­tion for di­vorce at any time pri­or to the court be­gin­ning de­lib­er­a­tions on the de­cision.

Title 7 Proceedings relating to Children in Family Law Matters

Chapter 1 General Provisions

Art. 295 Principle 222

In­di­vidu­al ac­tions re­lat­ing to main­ten­ance for minor and adult chil­dren and oth­er mat­ters re­lated to chil­dren shall be de­cided in sim­pli­fied pro­ceed­ings.

222 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 296 Principles of ex-officio investigation and assessment

1 The court shall in­vest­ig­ate the facts ex of­fi­cio.

2 The parties and third parties must co­oper­ate in the tests re­quired to es­tab­lish pa­tern­ity provided such tests not pose a danger to their health. The pro­vi­sions con­cern­ing the parties' and third parties' right to re­fuse are not ap­plic­able.

3 The court de­cides without be­ing bound by the re­quests of the parties.

Art. 297 Hearing of the parents and mediation

1 The court hears the par­ents in per­son when rul­ing on mat­ters re­lat­ing to a child.

2 The court may ask the par­ents to at­tempt me­di­ation.

Art. 298 Hearing the child

1 The child is heard in per­son and in an ap­pro­pri­ate way by the court or by a third party ap­poin­ted for this pur­pose, to the ex­tent that the child's age or oth­er good cause does not pre­clude a hear­ing.

1bis The use of elec­tron­ic equip­ment for au­dio or video trans­mis­sion is not per­mit­ted.223

2 Only the in­form­a­tion that is rel­ev­ant for the de­cision is placed on re­cord. This in­form­a­tion shall be com­mu­nic­ated to the par­ents or the child's wel­fare agent.

3 A child who has the ca­pa­city to con­sent may chal­lenge the re­fus­al to grant a hear­ing by fil­ing an ob­jec­tion.

223 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 299 Appointing a representative for the child

1 If ne­ces­sary, the court shall ap­point a per­son ex­per­i­enced in wel­fare and leg­al mat­ters to act as wel­fare agent for the child.

2 The court shall con­sider ap­point­ing a rep­res­ent­at­ive in par­tic­u­lar if:

a.224
the par­ents sub­mit dif­fer­ent ap­plic­a­tions re­gard­ing:
1.
al­loc­a­tion of par­ent­al re­spons­ib­il­ity,
2.
al­loc­a­tion of res­id­ence,
3.
im­port­ant ques­tions con­cern­ing their per­son­al re­la­tions with the child,
4.
shar­ing re­spons­ib­il­it­ies for care,
5.
main­ten­ance pay­ments;
b.225
the child pro­tec­tion au­thor­ity or one of the par­ents so re­quests;
c.
based on hear­ing with the par­ents or the child or based on oth­er reas­ons, the court:226
1.227
has ser­i­ous doubts about the par­ents' joint ap­plic­a­tions re­lat­ing to the is­sues lis­ted un­der let­ter a, or
2.
is con­sid­er­ing or­der­ing meas­ures for the pro­tec­tion of the child.

3 If the child with the ca­pa­city to con­sent so re­quests, a rep­res­ent­at­ive must be ap­poin­ted. The child may chal­lenge the re­jec­tion of his or her re­quest by fil­ing an ob­jec­tion.

224 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Main­ten­ance), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529).

225 Amended by An­nex 2 No 3 of the FA of 19 Dec. 2008, in force since 1 Jan. 2013 (AS 2010 1739, 2011 725; BBl 2006 72217001).

226 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Main­ten­ance), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529).

227 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Main­ten­ance), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529).

Art. 300 Competence of the representative 228

The child's rep­res­ent­at­ive may file ap­plic­a­tions and ap­pel­late rem­ed­ies to the ex­tent they con­cern:

a.
the al­loc­a­tion of the par­ent­al re­spons­ib­il­ity;
b.
the al­loc­a­tion of res­id­ence;
c.
im­port­ant ques­tions of per­son­al re­la­tions;
d.
shar­ing re­spons­ib­il­it­ies for care;
e.
main­ten­ance pay­ments;
f.
meas­ures for the pro­tec­tion of the child.

228 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Main­ten­ance), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529).

Art. 301 Notice of the decision

No­tice is the de­cision is giv­en:

a.
to the par­ents;
b.
to the child, if he or she is at least 14 years old;
c.229
to the wel­fare agent, if any, to the ex­tent the de­cision con­cerns the fol­low­ing is­sues:
1.
the al­loc­a­tion of the par­ent­al re­spons­ib­il­ity,
2.
the al­loc­a­tion of res­id­ence,
3.
im­port­ant ques­tions of per­son­al re­la­tions,
4.
shar­ing re­spons­ib­il­it­ies for care,
5.
main­ten­ance pay­ments,
6.
meas­ures for the pro­tec­tion of the child.

229 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Main­ten­ance), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529).

Art. 301a Maintenance payments 230

If main­ten­ance pay­ments are agreed in a main­ten­ance agree­ment or in the de­cision, the agree­ment or de­cision must in­dic­ate:

a.
the in­come and as­sets of each par­ent on which the agree­ment or de­cision is based;
b.
the amount de­term­ined for each child;
c.
any short­fall in the amount to cov­er the reas­on­able main­ten­ance of each child;
d.
wheth­er and to what ex­tent the main­ten­ance pay­ments are mod­i­fied to re­flect changes in liv­ing costs.

230 In­ser­ted by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Main­ten­ance), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529).

Chapter 2 Summary Procedure: Scope of Application 231

231 Amended by Annex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Maintenance), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529).

Art. 302 ... 232

1 Sum­mary pro­ced­ure ap­plies in par­tic­u­lar in the case of:

a.
de­cisions un­der the Hag­ue Con­ven­tion of 25 Oc­to­ber 1980233 on the Civil As­pects of In­ter­na­tion­al Child Ab­duc­tion and un­der the European Con­ven­tion of 20 May 1980234 on Re­cog­ni­tion and En­force­ment of De­cisions con­cern­ing Cus­tody of Chil­dren and on Res­tor­a­tion of Cus­tody of Chil­dren;
b.
the pay­ment of a spe­cial fin­an­cial con­tri­bu­tion to cov­er un­fore­seen ex­traordin­ary needs of the child (Art. 286 para. 3 CC235);
c.
no­tice to debt­ors and the pro­vi­sion of se­cur­ity for child sup­port out­side pro­ceed­ings on the par­ents' main­ten­ance ob­lig­a­tions (Art. 291 and 292 CC).

2 The pro­vi­sions of the Fed­er­al Act of 21 Decem­ber 2007236 on In­ter­na­tion­al Child Ab­duc­tion and the Hag­ue Con­ven­tions on the Pro­tec­tion of Chil­dren and Adults are re­served.

232 Re­pealed by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Main­ten­ance), with ef­fect from 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529).

233 SR 0.211.230.02

234 SR 0.211.230.01

235 SR 210

236 SR 211.222.32

Chapter 3 Maintenance and Paternity Actions 237

237 Amended by Annex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Maintenance), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529).

Art. 303 Interim measures

1 If pa­tern­ity is es­tab­lished, the de­fend­ant may be ordered to de­pos­it or ad­vance ap­pro­pri­ate amounts for the main­ten­ance of the child.

2 If the ac­tion for main­ten­ance has been filed to­geth­er with the pa­tern­ity ac­tion, the de­fend­ant must, at the plaintiff's re­quest:

a.
de­pos­it the costs for the birth and the suit­able con­tri­bu­tions to­wards the main­ten­ance of moth­er and child provided pa­tern­ity has been shown cred­ibly;
b.
make suit­able con­tri­bu­tions to­wards the main­ten­ance of the child sup­port provided must be as­sumed and the as­sump­tion can­not be re­futed by im­me­di­ately avail­able evid­ence.

Art. 304 Jurisdiction

1 The court that has jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide the pa­tern­ity ac­tion shall also de­cide on the de­pos­it, the ad­vance pay­ment, the dis­burse­ment of de­pos­ited amounts and the re­fund of ad­vances.

2 In an ac­tion for main­ten­ance, the court shall also de­cide on par­ent­al re­spons­ib­il­ity and oth­er child-re­lated is­sues. If a par­ent-child re­la­tion­ship is es­tab­lished, the par­ents have party status. The court may as­sign the roles of plaintiff and de­fend­ant.238

238 In­ser­ted by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Main­ten­ance) (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529). Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Title 8 Proceedings relating to Same-Sex Partnerships

Chapter 1 Summary Procedure

Art. 305 Scope of application

Sum­mary pro­ced­ure ap­plies in par­tic­u­lar to:239

a.
the de­term­in­a­tion of mon­et­ary con­tri­bu­tions to the main­ten­ance of the part­ner­ship and the no­tice to debt­ors (Art. 13 para. 2 and 3 of the Same-Sex Part­ner­ships Act of 18 June 2004240, SSPA),
b.
the au­thor­isa­tion of a part­ner to dis­pose of the com­mon home (Art. 14 para. 2 SSPA),
c.
the ex­pan­sion and re­voc­a­tion of a part­ner's power to rep­res­ent the part­ner­ship (Art. 15 para. 2 lt. a and para. 4 SSPA),
d.
the ob­lig­a­tion of a part­ner to provide in­form­a­tion on his or her in­come, as­sets and debts (Art. 16 para. 2 SSPA),
e.
the de­term­in­a­tion, ad­just­ment or can­cel­la­tion of mon­et­ary con­tri­bu­tions and the reg­u­la­tion of the use of the home and the house­hold ef­fects (Art. 17 para. 2 and 4 SSPA),
f.
the ob­lig­a­tion of the part­ners to co­oper­ate in tak­ing an in­vent­ory (Art. 20 para. 1 SSPA),
g.
the re­stric­tion of a part­ner's power to dis­pose of cer­tain as­sets (Art. 22 para. 1 SSPA),
h.
the grant­ing of dead­lines for the re­pay­ment of debts between the part­ners (Art. 23 para. 1 SSPA).

239 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), with ef­fect from 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

240 SR 211.231

Art. 306 Procedure

Art­icles 272 and 273 ap­ply by ana­logy to the pro­ced­ure.

Chapter 2 Dissolution and Annulment of Same-Sex Partnerships

Art. 307

The pro­vi­sions con­cern­ing the di­vorce pro­ceed­ings ap­ply by ana­logy to the dis­sol­u­tion and an­nul­ment of same-sex part­ner­ships.

Chapter 3 Proceedings relating to Children in connection with Same-Sex Partnerships241

241 Inserted by Annex No 2 of the FA of 17 June 2016 (Adoption), in force since 1 Jan. 2018 (AS 2017 3699; BBl 2015 877).

Art. 307a

Where a per­son has ad­op­ted the minor child of his or her re­gistered part­ner, Art­icles 295–302 ap­ply by ana­logy.

Title 9 Appellate Remedies

Chapter 1 Appeal

Section 1 Decisions that may be contested and Grounds for Appeal

Art. 308 Decisions that may be contested

1 An ap­peal is ad­miss­ible against:

a.
fi­nal and in­ter­im de­cisions of first in­stance;
b.
de­cisions of first in­stance on in­ter­im meas­ures.

2 In fin­an­cial mat­ters, an ap­peal is ad­miss­ible only if the value of the claim in the most re­cent pray­ers for re­lief is at least 10,000 francs.

Art. 309 Exceptions

An ap­peal is not ad­miss­ible:

a.
against de­cisions of the en­force­ment court;
b.
in the fol­low­ing mat­ters un­der the DEBA242:
1.
re­voc­a­tion of the stay of en­force­ment (Art. 57d DEBA),
2.
ad­mis­sion of a time-barred ob­jec­tion (Art. 77 para. 3 DEBA),
3.
clear­ance to pro­ceed (Art. 80–84 DEBA),
4.
re­voc­a­tion or sus­pen­sion of the debt en­force­ment pro­ceed­ings (Art. 85 DEBA),
5.
ad­mis­sion of the ob­jec­tion in the col­lec­tion of bills of ex­change (Art. 181 DEBA),
6.243
at­tach­ment (Art. 272 and 278 DEBA);
7.244
de­cisions fall­ing un­der the jur­is­dic­tion of the bank­ruptcy or com­pos­i­tion court un­der the DEBA.

242 SR 281.1

243 Amended by Art. 3 No 1 of the FD of 11 Dec. 2009 (Ap­prov­al and Im­ple­ment­a­tion of the Lugano Con­ven­tion), in force since 1 Jan. 2011 (AS 2010 5601; BBl 2009 1777).

244 In­ser­ted by Art. 3 No 1 of the FD of 11 Dec. 2009 (Ap­prov­al and Im­ple­ment­a­tion of the Lugano Con­ven­tion), in force since 1 Jan. 2011 (AS 2010 5601; BBl 2009 1777).

Art. 310 Grounds for appeal

The ap­peal may be filed on grounds of:

a.
in­cor­rect ap­plic­a­tion of the law;
b.
in­cor­rect es­tab­lish­ment of the facts.

Section 2 Appeals, Answers to the Appeal and Cross Appeals

Art. 311 Filing of appeal

1 The ap­peal must be filed in writ­ing and with a state­ment of the grounds with the ap­pel­late court with­in 30 days of ser­vice of a de­cision and grounds there­for or the sub­sequent ser­vice of the state­ment of grounds (Art. 239).

2 The ap­pealed de­cision must be ap­pen­ded to with the ap­peal.

Art. 312 Answer to the appeal

1 The ap­pel­late court serves the ap­peal on the op­pos­ing party for its writ­ten com­ments, un­less the ap­peal is ob­vi­ously in­ad­miss­ible or ob­vi­ously un­foun­ded.

2 An an­swer to the ap­peal must be filed with­in 30 days.

Art. 313 Cross appeal

1 The op­pos­ing party may file a cross ap­peal to­geth­er with the an­swer to the ap­peal.

2 The cross ap­peal lapses if:

a.
the ap­pel­late court de­clares the prin­cip­al ap­peal in­ad­miss­ible;
b.245
c.
the prin­cip­al ap­peal is with­drawn be­fore the be­gin­ning of de­lib­er­a­tions on the de­cision.

245 Re­pealed by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), with ef­fect from 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 314 Summary proceedings

1 If the de­cision was rendered in sum­mary pro­ceed­ings, the dead­line for fil­ing the ap­peal and the an­swer to ap­peal is in each case 10 days. A cross ap­peal is not ad­miss­ible.246

2 In fam­ily law dis­putes un­der Art­icles 271, 276, 302 and 305, the dead­line for fil­ing the ap­peal and the an­swer to the ap­peal is 30 days. A cross ap­peal is ad­miss­ible.247

246 Second sen­tence in­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prove­ment of Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

247 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Section 3 Effects and Procedure of an Appeal

Art. 315 Suspensive effect

1 The leg­al ef­fect and en­force­ab­il­ity of those parts of the con­tested de­cision to which the ap­plic­a­tions in the ap­peal re­late shall be sus­pen­ded.

2 The ap­peal does not have sus­pens­ive ef­fect if it is filed against a de­cision on:

a.
the right of reply;
b.
in­ter­im meas­ures.
c.
dir­ec­tions to debt­ors;
d.
the se­cur­ity provided for main­ten­ance.248

3 If the ap­peal is against an or­gan­isa­tion­al de­cision, it shall al­ways have sus­pens­ive ef­fect.249

4 If the party con­cerned is threatened with not eas­ily re­par­able harm, the ap­pel­late court may on re­quest:

a.
au­thor­ise early en­force­ment and, if ne­ces­sary, or­der pro­tect­ive meas­ures or the pro­vi­sion of se­cur­ity; or
b.
ex­cep­tion­ally de­fer en­force­ab­il­ity in the cases re­ferred to in para­graph 2.250

5The ap­pel­late court may de­cide be­fore the ap­peal is filed. The or­der is auto­mat­ic­ally can­celled if no grounds for the first in­stance de­cision are re­ques­ted or the dead­line for the ap­peal ex­pires un­used.251

248 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

249 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

250 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

251 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 316 Procedure before the appellate court

1 The ap­pel­late court may hold a hear­ing or de­cide on the basis of the case files.

2 It may or­der a second ex­change of writ­ten sub­mis­sions.

3 It may take evid­ence.

Art. 317 New facts and new evidence; Amendment of claim

1 New facts and new evid­ence are con­sidered only if:

a.
they are sub­mit­ted im­me­di­ately; and
b.
they could not have been sub­mit­ted in the first in­stance des­pite reas­on­able di­li­gence.

1bis Where the ap­pel­late court must es­tab­lish the facts ex of­fi­cio, new facts and new evid­ence may be ad­mit­ted un­til the court be­gins its de­lib­er­a­tions.252

2 The amend­ment of the claim is ad­miss­ible only if:

a.
the con­di­tions un­der Art­icle 227 para­graph 1 are ful­filled; and
b.253
the amend­ment is based on new facts or new evid­ence.

252 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

253 Amended by No II of the FA of 25 Sept. 2015 (Pro­fes­sion­al Rep­res­ent­a­tion in En­force­ment Pro­ceed­ings), in force since 1 Jan. 2018 (AS 2016 3643; BBl 2014 8669).

Art. 318 Decision

1 The ap­pel­late court may:

a.
con­firm the chal­lenged de­cision;
b.
make a new de­cision; or
c.
re­mit the case to the first in­stance if:
1.
an es­sen­tial part of the claim was not con­sidered, or
2.
es­sen­tial is­sues of fact must still be es­tab­lished.

2 Art­icle 239 ap­plies mu­tatis mutandis to giv­ing no­tice of and provid­ing grounds for the de­cision.254

3 If the ap­pel­late court makes a new de­cision, it shall also de­cide on the costs at first in­stance.

254 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Chapter 2 Objections

Art. 319 Object of challenge

An ob­jec­tion is ad­miss­ible against:

a.
fi­nal and in­ter­im de­cisions and de­cisions on in­ter­im meas­ures of first in­stance that may not be chal­lenged by an ap­peal;
b.
oth­er de­cisions and pro­ced­ur­al rul­ings of first in­stance:
1.
in the cases provided by the law,
2.
if they threaten to cause not eas­ily re­par­able harm;
c.
un­due delay by the court.

Art. 320 Grounds for an objection

An ob­jec­tion is ad­miss­ible on the fol­low­ing grounds:

a.
an in­cor­rect ap­plic­a­tion of the law;
b.
an ob­vi­ously in­cor­rect find­ing in fact.

Art. 321 Filing an objection

1 The ob­jec­tion must be filed in writ­ing and with a state­ment of grounds with the ap­pel­late court with­in 30 days of ser­vice of a de­cision and grounds there­for or of the sub­sequent ser­vice of the state­ment of the grounds (Art. 239).

2 If the ob­jec­tion is against a de­cision taken in sum­mary pro­ceed­ings or if oth­er first-in­stance de­cisions or pro­ced­ur­al rul­ings con­tested, the ob­jec­tion must be filed with­in 10 days un­less the law provides oth­er­wise.255

3 The con­tested de­cision or pro­ced­ur­al rul­ing must be en­closed if it has been served on the party.

4 The ob­jec­tion on the grounds of un­due delay may be filed at any time.

255 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 322 Answer to the objection

1 The ap­pel­late court serves the ob­jec­tion on the op­pos­ing party so that he or she may com­ment in writ­ing there­on, un­less the ob­jec­tion is ob­vi­ously in­ad­miss­ible or ob­vi­ously un­foun­ded.

2 The an­swer to the ob­jec­tion must be filed with­in the same peri­od as ap­plies to the ob­jec­tion.

Art. 323 Cross objections

Cross ob­jec­tions are not ad­miss­ible.

Art. 324 Comments of the lower court

The ap­pel­late court may in­vite the lower court to com­ment.

Art. 325 Suspensive effect

1 The ob­jec­tion does not sus­pend the leg­al ef­fect and en­force­ab­il­ity of the con­tested de­cision.

2 The ap­pel­late court may sus­pend the en­force­ab­il­ity of the con­tested de­cision, if the party con­cerned is threatened with not eas­ily re­par­able harm. The ap­pel­late court may de­cide be­fore the ob­jec­tion is filed. If ne­ces­sary, it shall or­der pro­tect­ive meas­ures or the pro­vi­sion of se­cur­ity. The or­der is auto­mat­ic­ally can­celled if no grounds for the first in­stance de­cision are re­ques­ted or the dead­line for the leg­al rem­edy ex­pires un­used.256

256 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 326 New applications, new facts and new evidence

1 New ap­plic­a­tions, new al­leg­a­tions of fact and new evid­ence are not ad­miss­ible.

2 Spe­cial pro­vi­sions of law are re­served.

Art. 327 Procedure and decision

1 The ap­pel­late court shall re­quest the case files from the lower court.

2 It may de­cide on the basis of the case files.

3 In the event that it up­holds the ob­jec­tion, the ap­pel­late court shall:

a.
set aside the de­cision or the pro­ced­ur­al rul­ing and re­mit the case to the lower court; or
b.
make a new de­cision provided the ap­pel­late court is in the po­s­i­tion to make a de­cision.

4 If an ob­jec­tion of un­due delay is up­held, the ap­pel­late court may set a dead­line with­in which the lower court must deal with the case.

5Art­icle 239 ap­plies mu­tatis mutandis to the no­ti­fic­a­tion and jus­ti­fic­a­tion of the de­cision.257

257 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 327a Enforcement declaration under the Lugano Convention 258

1 If the ob­jec­tion is against a de­cision of the en­force­ment court un­der Art­icles 38 to 52 of the Lugano Con­ven­tion of 30 Oc­to­ber 2007259 on Jur­is­dic­tion and the En­force­ment of Judg­ments in Civil and Com­mer­cial Mat­ters, the ap­pel­late court shall freely ex­am­ine the grounds for re­fus­al provided in the Con­ven­tion.

2 The ob­jec­tion has sus­pens­ive ef­fect. Pro­tect­ive meas­ures, in par­tic­u­lar at­tach­ments un­der Art­icle 271 para­graph 1 num­ber 6 DEBA260, are re­served.

3 The dead­line for fil­ing the ob­jec­tion against the en­force­ment de­clar­a­tion is gov­erned by Art­icle 43 para­graph 5 of the Con­ven­tion.

258 In­ser­ted by Art. 3 No 1 of the FD of 11 Dec. 2009 (Ap­prov­al and Im­ple­ment­a­tion of the Lugano Con­ven­tion), in force since 1 Jan. 2011 (AS 2010 5601; BBl 2009 1777).

259SR 0.275.12

260 SR 281.1

Chapter 3 Review

Art. 328 Grounds for review

1 A party may re­quest the court that has de­cided as fi­nal in­stance to re­view the fi­nal de­cision if:

a.261
the party des­pite ex­er­cising due di­li­gence sub­sequently dis­cov­ers sig­ni­fic­ant facts or de­cis­ive evid­ence that could not have been sub­mit­ted in the earli­er pro­ceed­ings, ex­clud­ing facts and evid­ence that arose after the de­cision;
b.
crim­in­al pro­ceed­ings have es­tab­lished that the de­cision was in­flu­enced to the det­ri­ment of the party con­cerned by a felony or mis­de­mean­our, even if no one has been con­victed by the crim­in­al court; if crim­in­al pro­ceed­ings are not pos­sible, proof may be provided in some oth­er man­ner;
c.262
it is claimed that the ac­cept­ance, with­draw­al or set­tle­ment of the claim is in­val­id be­cause of form­al or sub­stant­ive de­fi­cien­cies;
d.263
the party only dis­cov­ers a reas­on for re­cus­al after the pro­ceed­ings have been con­cluded and no oth­er leg­al rem­edy is avail­able.

2 A re­view on the grounds of a vi­ol­a­tion of the European Con­ven­tion on Hu­man Rights of 4 Novem­ber 1950264 (ECHR) may be re­ques­ted if:

a.265
the European Court of Hu­man Rights has de­term­ined in a fi­nal judg­ment (Art. 44 ECHR) that the ECHR or its pro­to­cols have been vi­ol­ated, or the case has been con­cluded by means of a friendly set­tle­ment (Art. 39 ECHR);
b.
com­pens­a­tion is not an ap­pro­pri­ate rem­edy for the ef­fects of the vi­ol­a­tion; and
c.
the re­view is ne­ces­sary to rem­edy the vi­ol­a­tion.

261 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

262 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

263 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

264 SR 0.101

265 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 1 Oct. 2021, in force since 1 Ju­ly 2022 (AS 2022 289; BBl 2021300, 889).

Art. 329 Deadlines and form

1 An ap­plic­a­tion for a re­view must be filed in writ­ing with a state­ment of the grounds with­in 90 days of the dis­cov­ery of the grounds for re­view.

2 The right to re­quest a re­view ex­pires 10 years after the de­cision comes in­to force, ex­cept in cases un­der Art­icle 328 para­graph 1 let­ter b.

Art. 330 Response by the opposing party

The court shall serve the ap­plic­a­tion for the re­view on the op­pos­ing party so that he or she may re­spond, un­less the re­quest is ob­vi­ously in­ad­miss­ible or ob­vi­ously un­foun­ded.

Art. 331 Suspensive effect

1 A re­quest for a re­view does not sus­pend the leg­al ef­fect and en­force­ab­il­ity of the de­cision.

2 The court may sus­pend the en­force­ab­il­ity of the con­tested de­cision.266 If ne­ces­sary, it shall or­der pro­tect­ive meas­ures or the pro­vi­sion of se­cur­ity.

266 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 332 Decision on the review application

An ob­jec­tion may be filed against the de­cision on the ap­plic­a­tion for re­view.

Art. 333 New decision on the merits

1 If the court up­holds the re­quest for a re­view, it shall quash its earli­er de­cision and make a new one.

2 In the new de­cision, the court shall also de­cide on the costs of the earli­er pro­ceed­ings.

3 It shall give no­tice of its de­cision to the parties to­geth­er with a writ­ten state­ment of grounds.

Chapter 4 Explanation and Rectification

Art. 334

1 If the con­clu­sions are un­clear, con­tra­dict­ory or in­com­plete, or if they do not cor­res­pond with the state­ment of grounds, the court shall ex of­fi­cio or at the re­quest of a party provide an ex­plan­a­tion or rec­ti­fic­a­tion of the de­cision. The re­quest must in­dic­ate the rel­ev­ant parts and the re­ques­ted changes.

2 Art­icles 330 and 331 ap­ply by ana­logy. The court does not re­quire the parties to com­ment when cor­rect­ing ty­po­graph­ic­al or arith­met­ic­al er­rors.

3 An ob­jec­tion may be filed against the de­cision on the re­quest for ex­plan­a­tion or rec­ti­fic­a­tion.

4 No­tice of the ex­plained or rec­ti­fied de­cision shall be giv­en to the parties.

Title 10 Enforcement

Chapter 1 Enforcement of Decisions

Art. 335 Scope of application

1 De­cisions are en­forced ac­cord­ing to the pro­vi­sions of this chapter.

2 If a de­cision relates to the pay­ment of money or pro­vi­sion of se­cur­ity, it is en­forced ac­cord­ing to the pro­vi­sions of the DEBA267.

3 The re­cog­ni­tion, the de­clar­a­tion of en­force­ab­il­ity and the en­force­ment of for­eign de­cisions are gov­erned by this chapter, un­less an in­ter­na­tion­al treaty or the PILA268 provides oth­er­wise.

Art. 336 Enforceability

1 A de­cision is en­force­able, if:

a.
it is leg­ally bind­ing and the court has not sus­pen­ded its en­force­ab­il­ity (Art. 315 Abs. 4, 325 para. 2 and 331 para. 2); or
b.
it is not yet leg­ally bind­ing, but its early en­force­ab­il­ity has been au­thor­ised.269

2 The court that has made the de­cision on en­force­ab­il­ity shall cer­ti­fy the en­force­ab­il­ity of the de­cision on re­quest.

3 A de­cision is­sued without writ­ten grounds (Art. 239) is en­force­able un­der the con­di­tions set out in para­graph 1.270

269 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

270 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 337 Direct enforcement

1 If the court mak­ing the de­cision has already ordered the ne­ces­sary en­force­ment meas­ures (Art. 236 para. 3), the de­cision may be dir­ectly en­forced.

2 The un­suc­cess­ful party may ask the en­force­ment court to sus­pend en­force­ment; Art­icle 341 ap­plies by ana­logy.

Art. 338 Request for enforcement

1 If the de­cision may not be dir­ectly en­forced, a re­quest for en­force­ment must be sub­mit­ted to the en­force­ment court.

2 The ap­plic­ant must es­tab­lish that the re­quire­ments for en­force­ment ap­ply and pro­duce the ne­ces­sary phys­ic­al re­cords.

Art. 339 Jurisdiction and procedure

1 Man­dat­ory jur­is­dic­tion to or­der the meas­ures of en­force­ment or to sus­pend the en­force­ment lies with the court:

a.
at the dom­i­cile or re­gistered of­fice of the un­suc­cess­ful party;
b.
at the place where the meas­ures are to be taken; or
c.
at the place where the de­cision to be en­forced was made.

2 The court de­cides in sum­mary pro­ceed­ings.

Art. 340 Protective measures 271

The en­force­ment court may or­der pro­tect­ive meas­ures, if ne­ces­sary without hear­ing the op­pos­ing party be­fore­hand.

271 Amended by Art. 3 No 1 of the FD of 11 Dec. 2009 (Ap­prov­al and Im­ple­ment­a­tion of the Lugano Con­ven­tion), in force since 1 Jan. 2011 (AS 2010 5601; BBl 2009 1777).

Art. 341 Examination of enforceability and hearing the unsuccessful party

1 The en­force­ment court shall ex­am­ine en­force­ab­il­ity ex of­fi­cio.

2 It shall al­low the un­suc­cess­ful party a brief peri­od with­in which to file its com­ments.

3 On the mer­its, the un­suc­cess­ful party may only ar­gue that mat­ters pre­vent­ing the en­force­ment of the de­cision have oc­curred since no­tice there­of was giv­en, such as ex­tinc­tion, de­fer­ment, pre­scrip­tion or for­feit­ure of the right to due per­form­ance. Ex­tinc­tion and de­fer­ment must be proven by phys­ic­al re­cords.

Art. 342 Enforcement of conditional performance or performance subject to counter-performance

De­cisions provid­ing for con­di­tion­al per­form­ance or per­form­ance that is sub­ject to counter-per­form­ance may not be en­forced un­til the en­force­ment court has de­term­ined that the con­di­tion is ful­filled or that the counter-per­form­ance has been duly offered, rendered, or guar­an­teed.

Art. 343 Obligation to act, refrain from acting or to tolerate

1 If the de­cision provides for an ob­lig­a­tion to act, re­frain from act­ing or to tol­er­ate something, the en­force­ment court may:

a.
is­sue a threat of crim­in­al pen­alty un­der Art­icle 292 SCC272;
b.
im­pose a dis­cip­lin­ary fine not ex­ceed­ing 5,000 francs;
c.
im­pose a dis­cip­lin­ary fine not ex­ceed­ing 1,000 francs for each day of non-com­pli­ance;
d.
or­der a com­puls­ory meas­ure such as tak­ing away a mov­able item or va­cat­ing im­mov­able prop­erty; or
e.
or­der per­form­ance by a third party.

1bis If the de­cision con­tains an in­junc­tion un­der Art­icle 28bCC273, the en­force­ment court may at the re­quest of the ap­plic­ant or­der elec­tron­ic mon­it­or­ing in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 28c CC.274

2 The un­suc­cess­ful party and third parties must provide the re­quired in­form­a­tion and tol­er­ate the re­quired searches.

3 The per­son en­trus­ted with en­force­ment may re­quest the as­sist­ance of the com­pet­ent au­thor­it­ies.

272 SR 311.0

273 SR 210

274 In­ser­ted by No I 2 of the FA of 14 Dec. 2018 on Im­prov­ing the Pro­tec­tion of Per­sons Af­fected by Vi­ol­ence, in force since 1 Jan. 2022 (AS 2019 2273; BBl 2017 7307).

Art. 344 Declaration of intent

1 If the de­cision relates to a de­clar­a­tion of in­tent, the en­force­able de­cision takes the place of the de­clar­a­tion.

2 If the de­clar­a­tion con­cerns a pub­lic re­gister, such as the land re­gister or the com­mer­cial re­gister, the court mak­ing the de­cision shall is­sue the re­quired in­struc­tions to the re­gis­trar.

Art. 345 Damages and conversion into money

1 The pre­vail­ing party may de­mand:

a.
dam­ages if the un­suc­cess­ful party does not fol­low the or­ders of the court;
b.
con­ver­sion of the per­form­ance due in­to the pay­ment of money.

2 The en­force­ment court shall de­term­ine the rel­ev­ant amount.

Art. 346 Appellate remedy for third parties

Third parties may file an ob­jec­tion against en­force­ment de­cisions if the de­cision af­fects their rights.

Chapter 2 Enforcement of Official Records

Art. 347 Enforceability

Of­fi­cial re­cords re­lat­ing to any type of per­form­ance may be en­forced in the same way as ju­di­cial de­cisions if:

a.
the ob­li­gee ex­pressly de­clares in the re­cord that he or she ac­cepts dir­ect en­force­ment;
b.
the leg­al ground for the per­form­ance due is men­tioned in the re­cord; and
c.
the per­form­ance due is:
1.
suf­fi­ciently spe­cified in the re­cord,
2.
ac­cep­ted in the re­cord by the ob­li­gee, and
3.
due.

Art. 348 Exceptions

Of­fi­cial re­cords are not dir­ectly en­force­able if they con­cern per­form­ance:

a.
un­der the Gender Equal­ity Act of 24 March 1995275;
b.
arising from the ten­ancy and lease of res­id­en­tial and busi­ness prop­erty or the lease of ag­ri­cul­tur­al prop­erty;
c.
un­der the Par­ti­cip­a­tion Act of 17 Decem­ber 1993276;
d.
arising from em­ploy­ment re­la­tions or un­der the Re­cruit­ment Act of 6 Oc­to­ber 1989277;
e.
arising from con­sumer con­tracts (Art. 32).

Art. 349 Records relating to performance in money

An en­force­able re­cord re­lat­ing to per­form­ance in money is deemed to be a title set­ting aside an ob­jec­tion un­der Art­icles 80 and 81 DEBA278.

Art. 350 Records relating to other forms of performance

1 If the en­force­ment of a re­cord re­lat­ing to an­oth­er form of per­form­ance is sought, at the re­quest of the ob­lig­or the not­ary pub­lic shall serve the ob­li­gee with a cer­ti­fied copy of the re­cord, set­ting a dead­line of 20 days for per­form­ance. The ob­lig­or re­ceives a copy of the no­ti­fic­a­tion.

2 If per­form­ance is not rendered with­in the dead­line, the ob­lig­or may sub­mit a re­quest for en­force­ment to the en­force­ment court.

Art. 351 Proceedings before the enforcement court

1 The ob­li­gee may con­test his or her ob­lig­a­tion to render per­form­ance only if the ob­jec­tion raised can be im­me­di­ately proven.

2 If a de­clar­a­tion of in­tent is owed, the de­cision of the en­force­ment court takes the place of the de­clar­a­tion. The en­force­ment court shall is­sue the re­quired in­struc­tions in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 344 para­graph 2.

Art. 352 Judicial review

The ju­di­cial re­view of the per­form­ance due is re­served in every case. In par­tic­u­lar the ob­li­gee may at any time file a claim for a de­clar­at­ory judg­ment that the ob­lig­a­tion does not or no longer ex­ists or that it has been sus­pen­ded.

Part 3 Arbitration

Title 1 General Provisions

Art. 353 Scope of application

1 The pro­vi­sions of this Part ap­ply to the pro­ceed­ings be­fore ar­bit­ral tribunals based in Switzer­land, un­less the pro­vi­sions of the Twelfth Chapter of the PILA279 ap­ply.

2 The parties may ex­clude the ap­plic­a­tion of this Part by mak­ing a de­clar­a­tion to this ef­fect in the ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment or a sub­sequent agree­ment, and in­stead agree that the pro­vi­sions of the Twelfth Chapter of the PILA ap­ply. The de­clar­a­tion must be in the form spe­cified in Art­icle 358.280

279 SR 291

280 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

Art. 354 Arbitrability

Any claim over which the parties may freely dis­pose may be the ob­ject of an ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment.

Art. 355 Location of the arbitral tribunal

1 The loc­a­tion of the ar­bit­ral tribunal shall be de­term­ined by the parties or by the body they have des­ig­nated. If no loc­a­tion is de­term­ined, the ar­bit­ral tribunal it­self de­term­ine its loc­a­tion.

2 If neither the parties nor the des­ig­nated body nor the ar­bit­ral tribunal de­term­ine the loc­a­tion, the or­din­ary court that would have jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide the mat­ter in the ab­sence of an ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment shall de­cide.

3 If sev­er­al or­din­ary courts have jur­is­dic­tion, the loc­a­tion of the ar­bit­ral tribunal shall be the loc­a­tion of the or­din­ary court first seised by vir­tue of Art­icle 356.

4 Un­less the parties have agreed oth­er­wise, the ar­bit­ral tribunal may hold hear­ings, take evid­ence and de­lib­er­ate at any oth­er loc­a­tion.

Art. 356 Competent ordinary courts

1 The can­ton in which the ar­bit­ral tribunal is loc­ated shall des­ig­nate a su­per­i­or court that shall have jur­is­dic­tion:

a.
to de­cide on ob­jec­tions and ap­plic­a­tions for re­view;
b.
to re­ceive the ar­bit­ral award on de­pos­it and to cer­ti­fy its en­force­ab­il­ity.

2 The can­ton where the ar­bit­ral tribunal is loc­ated shall des­ig­nate a dif­fer­ent court or a dif­fer­ently com­posed court to have jur­is­dic­tion as the sole in­stance for:

a.
the ap­point­ment, chal­lenge, re­mov­al and re­place­ment of the ar­bit­rat­ors;
b.
the ex­ten­sion of the ar­bit­ral tribunal's term of of­fice;
c.
sup­port­ing the ar­bit­ral tribunal in all its pro­ced­ur­al acts.

3 The com­pet­ent or­din­ary court de­cides in sum­mary pro­ceed­ings oth­er than in cases un­der para­graph 1 let­ter a.281 Art­icle 251a para­graph 2 ap­plies.282

281 In­ser­ted by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

282 Second sen­tence in­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Title 2 Arbitration Agreement and Arbitration Clause 283

283 Amended by Annex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

Art. 357 Arbitration agreement

1 The ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment may re­late to ex­ist­ing or fu­ture dis­putes arising from a spe­cif­ic leg­al re­la­tion­ship.

2 The valid­ity of the agree­ment may not be dis­puted on the ground that the main con­tract is in­val­id.

Art. 358 Form

1 The ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment must be done in writ­ing or in any oth­er form al­low­ing it to be evid­enced by text.

2 The pro­vi­sions of this Part ap­ply by ana­logy to ar­bit­ra­tion clauses in uni­lat­er­al trans­ac­tions or in art­icles of as­so­ci­ation.284

284 In­ser­ted by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

Art. 359 Challenging the arbitral tribunal's jurisdiction

1 If the valid­ity of the ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment, its con­tent, its scope or the prop­er con­sti­tu­tion of the ar­bit­ral tribunal is chal­lenged be­fore the ar­bit­ral tribunal, the tribunal shall de­cide on its own jur­is­dic­tion by way of an in­ter­im de­cision or in the fi­nal award on the mer­its.

2 An ob­jec­tion to the ar­bit­ral tribunal on the grounds of lack of jur­is­dic­tion must be raised pri­or to any de­fence on the mer­its.

Title 3 Constitution of the Arbitral Tribunal

Art. 360 Number of arbitrators

1 The parties may freely agree on the num­ber of ar­bit­rat­ors. In the ab­sence of an agree­ment, the ar­bit­ral tribunal shall com­prise three mem­bers.

2 If the parties have agreed on an even num­ber of ar­bit­rat­ors, it is pre­sumed that an ad­di­tion­al ar­bit­rat­or must be ap­poin­ted as the chair­per­son.

Art. 361 Appointment by the parties

1 The mem­bers of the ar­bit­ral tribunal shall be ap­poin­ted as agreed by the parties.

2 In the ab­sence of any agree­ment, each party shall ap­point the same num­ber of ar­bit­rat­ors; the ar­bit­rat­ors shall then un­an­im­ously elect an­oth­er per­son as chair­per­son.

3 If an ar­bit­rat­or is des­ig­nated by his or her func­tion, the hold­er of that func­tion who ac­cepts the man­date is deemed to be ap­poin­ted.

4 In mat­ters re­lat­ing to the ten­ancy and lease of res­id­en­tial prop­erty, only the con­cili­ation au­thor­ity may be ap­poin­ted as ar­bit­ral tribunal.

Art. 362 Appointment by the ordinary court

1 If the ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment provides no oth­er body for the ap­point­ment, or if such body does not ap­point the mem­bers with­in a reas­on­able time, the or­din­ary court com­pet­ent un­der Art­icle 356 para­graph 2 shall pro­ceed with the ap­point­ment at the re­quest of one of the parties if:

a.
the parties can­not agree on the ap­point­ment of the single ar­bit­rat­or or the chair­per­son;
b.
a party fails to des­ig­nate his or her ar­bit­rat­or with­in 30 days from be­ing re­ques­ted to do so; or
c.
the ap­poin­ted ar­bit­rat­ors can­not agree on the ap­point­ment of the chair­per­son with­in 30 days from their ap­point­ment.

2 In case of a multi-party ar­bit­ra­tion, the or­din­ary court com­pet­ent un­der Art­icle 356 para­graph 2 may ap­point all the ar­bit­rat­ors.

3 If an or­din­ary court is des­ig­nated to ap­point an ar­bit­rat­or, it must pro­ceed with the ap­point­ment un­less a sum­mary ex­am­in­a­tion shows that no ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment ex­ists between the parties.

Art. 363 Duty to disclose

1 A per­son asked to take the of­fice of an ar­bit­rat­or must dis­close im­me­di­ately any cir­cum­stances that might raise reas­on­able doubts about his or her in­de­pend­ence or im­par­ti­al­ity.

2 This duty con­tin­ues throughout the pro­ceed­ings.

Art. 364 Acceptance of office

1 The ar­bit­rat­ors shall con­firm ac­cept­ance of their of­fice.

2 The ar­bit­ral tribunal is con­sti­tuted only when all the ar­bit­rat­ors have ac­cep­ted their of­fice.

Art. 365 Secretary

1 The ar­bit­ral tribunal may ap­point a sec­ret­ary.

2 Art­icles 363 para­graph 1 and 367 to 369 ap­ply by ana­logy.

Art. 366 Term of office

1 The parties may lim­it the term of of­fice in the ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment or in a sub­sequent agree­ment.

2 The term of of­fice with­in which the ar­bit­ral tribunal must is­sue its award may be ex­ten­ded:

a.
by agree­ment of the parties;
b.
at the re­quest of a party or of the ar­bit­ral tribunal: by the or­din­ary court with jur­is­dic­tion un­der Art­icle 356 para­graph 2.

Title 4 Challenge, Removal and Replacement of Arbitrators

Art. 367 Rejection of an arbitrator

1 A mem­ber of the ar­bit­ral tribunal may be chal­lenged:

a.
if he or she lacks the qual­i­fic­a­tions re­quired by the parties;
b.
if there is a ground for chal­lenge in ac­cord­ance with the rules of ar­bit­ra­tion ad­op­ted by the parties; or
c.
if there is reas­on­able doubt as to his or her in­de­pend­ence or im­par­ti­al­ity.

2 A party may chal­lenge an ar­bit­rat­or whom that party has ap­poin­ted or in whose ap­point­ment that party has par­ti­cip­ated only if the grounds for the chal­lenge came to the at­ten­tion of the party con­cerned after the ap­point­ment des­pite ex­er­cising due di­li­gence.285 No­tice of the reas­on for the chal­lenge must be giv­en to the ar­bit­ral tribunal and the op­pos­ing party im­me­di­ately.

285 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

Art. 368 Challenging the arbitral tribunal

1 A party may chal­lenge the ar­bit­ral tribunal if an op­pos­ing party has ex­er­ted a pre­dom­in­ant in­flu­ence on the ap­point­ment of its mem­bers. No­tice of the chal­lenge must be giv­en to the ar­bit­ral tribunal and the op­pos­ing party im­me­di­ately.

2 The new ar­bit­ral tribunal is con­sti­tuted ac­cord­ing to the pro­ced­ure spe­cified in Art­icles 361 and 362.

3 The parties may ap­point the mem­bers of the chal­lenged ar­bit­ral tribunal again as ar­bit­rat­ors.

Art. 369 Challenge procedure

1 The parties may freely agree on the chal­lenge pro­ced­ure.

2 Un­less the parties have agreed oth­er­wise and if the ar­bit­ra­tion pro­ceed­ings have not yet been con­cluded, writ­ten no­tice of the chal­lenge stat­ing the grounds must be giv­en to the chal­lenged mem­ber of the ar­bit­ral tribunal and the oth­er mem­bers of the ar­bit­ral tribunal with­in 30 days of the date on which the chal­len­ging party be­comes aware of the grounds for the chal­lenge or could have be­come aware there­of had it ex­er­cised due di­li­gence.286

3 The chal­len­ging party may with­in 30 days of fil­ing the chal­lenge re­quest a de­cision by the body des­ig­nated by the parties or, if no such body has been des­ig­nated, by the state court that has jur­is­dic­tion un­der Art­icle 356 para­graph 2.287

4 Un­less the parties have agreed oth­er­wise, the ar­bit­ral tribunal may con­tin­ue with the ar­bit­ra­tion dur­ing the chal­lenge pro­ced­ure and make an award without ex­clud­ing the chal­lenged ar­bit­rat­or.

5 The de­cision on the chal­lenge may be con­tested only once the first ar­bit­ral award has been made.

286 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

287 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

Art. 370 Removal

1 Any mem­ber of the ar­bit­ral tribunal may be re­moved by a writ­ten agree­ment of the parties. The agree­ment re­quires the form spe­cified for an ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment.288

2 If a mem­ber of the ar­bit­ral tribunal is un­able to ful­fil his or her du­ties with­in due time or with due care, un­less the parties have agreed oth­er­wise, he or she may be re­moved at a party's re­quest by the body des­ig­nated by the parties or, if no such body has been des­ig­nated, by the or­din­ary court that has jur­is­dic­tion un­der Art­icle 356 para­graph 2.289

3 Art­icle 369 para­graph 5 ap­plies to the chal­lenge of the re­mov­al.

288 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

289 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

Art. 371 Replacement of an arbitrator

1 If an ar­bit­rat­or must be re­placed, the same pro­ced­ure as for ap­point­ment ap­plies, un­less the parties agree or have agreed oth­er­wise.

2 If re­place­ment can­not be ef­fected in this way, the new ar­bit­rat­or shall be nom­in­ated by the or­din­ary court that has jur­is­dic­tion un­der Art­icle 356 para­graph 2 un­less the ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment ex­cludes this pos­sib­il­ity or be­comes in­ef­fect­ive on the re­tire­ment of an ar­bit­rat­or.

3 In the ab­sence of an agree­ment between the parties, the newly con­sti­tuted ar­bit­ral tribunal shall de­cide on the ex­tent to which pro­ced­ur­al acts in which the re­placed ar­bit­rat­or has par­ti­cip­ated must re­peated.

4 The dead­line with­in which the ar­bit­ral tribunal must is­sue its award is not sus­pen­ded dur­ing the re­place­ment pro­ced­ure.

Title 5 Arbitration Proceedings

Art. 372 Pendency

1 Ar­bit­ra­tion pro­ceed­ings be­come pending:

a.
when a party seises the ar­bit­ral tribunal des­ig­nated in the ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment; or
b.
if no ar­bit­ral tribunal is des­ig­nated in the ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment: when a party ini­ti­ates the pro­ced­ure to con­sti­tute the ar­bit­ral tribunal or the pre­ced­ing con­cili­ation pro­ceed­ings agreed by the parties.

2290

290 Re­pealed by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), with ef­fect from 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 373 General rules of procedure

1 The parties may reg­u­late the ar­bit­ra­tion pro­ced­ure:

a.
them­selves;
b.
by re­fer­ring to a set of ar­bit­ra­tion rules;
c.
ac­cord­ing to a pro­ced­ur­al law of their choice.

2 If the parties have not reg­u­lated the pro­ced­ure, it is de­term­ined by the ar­bit­ral tribunal.

3 The chair­per­son of the ar­bit­ral tribunal may de­cide on cer­tain pro­ced­ur­al ques­tions if he or she is au­thor­ised to do so by the parties or by the oth­er mem­bers of the tribunal.

4 The ar­bit­ral tribunal must guar­an­tee the equal treat­ment of the parties and their right to be heard in ad­versari­al pro­ceed­ings.

5 Each party may act through a rep­res­ent­at­ive.

6 An ob­jec­tion to a breach of the rules of pro­ced­ure must be filed im­me­di­ately after it has been re­cog­nised or would have been re­cog­nis­able had due di­li­gence been ex­er­cised, oth­er­wise it may not sub­sequently be claimed that the rules were breached.291

291 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

Art. 374 Interim measures, security and damages

1 The or­din­ary court or, un­less the parties have oth­er­wise agreed, the ar­bit­ral tribunal may at the re­quest of a party or­der in­ter­im meas­ures, in­clud­ing meas­ures to pro­tect the evid­ence.

2 If the party con­cerned does not com­ply with the meas­ure ordered by the ar­bit­ral tribunal, the tribunal or a party may ap­ply to the or­din­ary court for it to is­sue the ne­ces­sary or­ders.292

3 The ar­bit­ral tribunal or the or­din­ary court may make the in­ter­im meas­ures con­di­tion­al on the pay­ment of se­cur­ity if it is an­ti­cip­ated that the meas­ures may cause harm to the oth­er party.

4 The ap­plic­ant is li­able for the harm caused by un­jus­ti­fied in­ter­im meas­ures. If he or she proves, however, that the ap­plic­a­tion for the meas­ures was made in good faith, the ar­bit­ral tribunal or the or­din­ary court may re­duce the dam­ages or re­lieve the ap­plic­ant en­tirely from li­ab­il­ity. The ag­grieved party may as­sert his or her claim in the pending ar­bit­ra­tion.

5 The se­cur­ity must be re­leased once it is es­tab­lished that no claim for dam­ages will be filed; where there is un­cer­tainty, the court shall set a dead­line for fil­ing the ac­tion.

292 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 375 Taking of evidence and participation of the ordinary court

1 The ar­bit­ral tribunal takes the evid­ence it­self.

2 If the tak­ing of evid­ence or any oth­er pro­ced­ur­al act re­quires the as­sist­ance of the of­fi­cial au­thor­it­ies, the ar­bit­ral tribunal may re­quest the par­ti­cip­a­tion of the or­din­ary court that has jur­is­dic­tion un­der Art­icle 356 para­graph 2. With the con­sent of the ar­bit­ral tribunal, the same may also be re­ques­ted by a party.

3 The mem­bers of the ar­bit­ral tribunal may par­ti­cip­ate in the pro­ced­ur­al acts of the or­din­ary court and may ask ques­tions.

Art. 376 Joinder of parties, joinder of actions and participation of third parties

1 Ar­bit­ra­tion may be ini­ti­ated by or against joint parties if:

a.
all the parties are con­nec­ted among them­selves by one or more cor­res­pond­ing ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ments; and
b.
the as­ser­ted claims are identic­al or fac­tu­ally con­nec­ted.

2 Fac­tu­ally con­nec­ted claims between the same parties may be joined in the same ar­bit­ra­tion pro­ceed­ings if they are the sub­ject of cor­res­pond­ing ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ments between these parties.

3 The in­ter­ven­tion of a third party and the join­der of a per­son no­ti­fied as a party to an ac­tion re­quire an ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment between the third party and the parties to the dis­pute and are sub­ject to the con­sent of the ar­bit­ral tribunal.

Art. 377 Set-off and counterclaim

1 The ar­bit­ral tribunal has jur­is­dic­tion to de­cide the set-off de­fence, even if the claim to be set off does not fall with­in the scope of the ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment or is sub­ject to an­oth­er ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment or an agree­ment on jur­is­dic­tion.

2 The coun­ter­claim is ad­miss­ible if it con­cerns a claim that is covered by a cor­res­pond­ing ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment between the parties.

Art. 378 Advance of costs

1 The ar­bit­ral tribunal may or­der the ad­vance of the pre­sumed costs of the pro­ceed­ings and may make the pro­ceed­ings con­di­tion­al on the pay­ment of the ad­vance. Un­less the parties have agreed oth­er­wise, the ar­bit­ral tribunal de­term­ines the amount to be paid by each party.

2 If one party does not pay the re­quired ad­vance, the oth­er party may ad­vance the en­tire costs or with­draw from the ar­bit­ra­tion. In the lat­ter case, the party with­draw­ing may ini­ti­ate new ar­bit­ra­tion pro­ceed­ings for the same mat­ter or pro­ceed be­fore the or­din­ary court.

Art. 379 Security for party costs

If the plaintiff ap­pears to be in­solv­ent, the ar­bit­ral tribunal may at the de­fend­ant's re­quest or­der that se­cur­ity be provided by a cer­tain dead­line for the prob­able party costs due by the de­fend­ant. Art­icle 378 para­graph 2 ap­plies by ana­logy.

Art. 380 Legal aid

Leg­al aid is ex­cluded.

Title 6 Arbitral Award

Art. 381 Applicable law

1 The ar­bit­ral tribunal de­cides:

a.
ac­cord­ing to the rules of law chosen by the parties; or
b.
based on equity, if the parties have au­thor­ised it to do so.

2 In the ab­sence of such choice or au­thor­isa­tion, it shall de­cide ac­cord­ing to the law that an or­din­ary court would ap­ply.

Art. 382 Deliberations and decision

1 All mem­bers of the ar­bit­ral tribunal must par­ti­cip­ate in the de­lib­er­a­tions and de­cisions.

2 If an ar­bit­rat­or re­fuses to par­ti­cip­ate in a de­lib­er­a­tion or a de­cision, the oth­ers may de­lib­er­ate or de­cide without him or her, un­less the parties have agreed oth­er­wise.

3 The award is de­term­ined by a ma­jor­ity de­cision, un­less the parties have agreed oth­er­wise.

4 If no ma­jor­ity is reached, the award is de­term­ined by the chair­per­son.

Art. 383 Interim and partial awards

Un­less the parties have agreed oth­er­wise, the ar­bit­ral tribunal may lim­it the pro­ceed­ings to cer­tain ques­tions or pray­ers for re­lief.

Art. 384 Content of the award

1 The award con­tains de­tails of:

a.
the com­pos­i­tion of the ar­bit­ral tribunal;
b.
the loc­a­tion where the ar­bit­ral tribunal sits;
c.
the parties and their rep­res­ent­at­ives;
d.
the parties' pray­ers for re­lief or, if none, the ques­tion to be de­cided;
e.
un­less the parties have ex­pli­citly dis­pensed with this re­quire­ment: a state­ment of the facts, the leg­al con­sid­er­a­tions and, if ap­plic­able, the con­sid­er­a­tions in equity;
f.
the con­clu­sions on the award on the mer­its, as well as the amount and al­loc­a­tion of the costs and party costs;
g.
the date of the award.

2 The award must be signed; the sig­na­ture of the chair­per­son suf­fices.

Art. 385 Agreement between the parties

If the parties settle their dis­pute in the course of the ar­bit­ral pro­ceed­ings, the ar­bit­ral tribunal shall on re­quest re­cord the agree­ment in the form of an award.

Art. 386 Notice and deposit

1 Each party is served with no­tice of the award.

2 Each party may at his or her own ex­pense de­pos­it a copy of the award with the or­din­ary court that has jur­is­dic­tion un­der Art­icle 356 para­graph 1.

3 At the re­quest of a party, this court shall cer­ti­fy the award as en­force­able.

Art. 387 Effect of the award

Once no­tice of the award has been giv­en to the parties, it has the ef­fect of a leg­ally-bind­ing and en­force­able ju­di­cial de­cision.

Art. 388 Correction, explanation and amendment of the award

1 Either party may ap­ply to the ar­bit­ral tribunal to:

a.
cor­rect ty­po­graph­ic­al and arith­met­ic­al er­rors in the award;
b.
ex­plain spe­cif­ic parts of the award;
c.
or is­sue a sup­ple­ment­ary award in re­la­tion to claims made in the ar­bit­ra­tion pro­ceed­ings that were not con­sidered in the award.

2 The ap­plic­a­tion must be made to the ar­bit­ral tribunal with­in 30 days from the dis­cov­ery of the er­ror or the parts of the award that need to be ex­plained or amended, but no later than one year from re­ceiv­ing no­tice of the award.

3 The ap­plic­a­tion does not af­fect the dead­lines for fil­ing ap­peals. A new peri­od for fil­ing an ap­peal in re­la­tion to the cor­rec­ted, ex­plained or sup­ple­men­ted part of the award be­gins from the date on which no­tice of the cor­rec­tion, ex­plan­a­tion or sup­ple­ment is giv­en.293

293 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

Title 7 Appellate Remedies

Chapter 1 Objections

Art. 389 Objection to the Federal Supreme Court

1 An ar­bit­ral award is sub­ject to ob­jec­tion to the Fed­er­al Su­preme Court.

2 The pro­ced­ure is gov­erned by the Fed­er­al Su­preme Court Act of 17 June 2005294, un­less oth­er­wise provided in this Chapter.

Art. 390 Objection to the cantonal court

1 By ex­press de­clar­a­tion in the ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment or in a sub­sequent agree­ment, the parties may agree that the ar­bit­ral award may be con­tested by way of ob­jec­tion to the can­ton­al court that has jur­is­dic­tion un­der Art­icle 356 para­graph 1.

2 The pro­ced­ure is gov­erned by Art­icles 319 to 327, un­less oth­er­wise provided in this Chapter. The de­cision of the can­ton­al court is fi­nal.

Art. 391 Subsidiarity

An ob­jec­tion is only ad­miss­ible after the means of ar­bit­ral ap­peal provided for in the ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ment are ex­hausted.

Art. 392 Challengeable awards

An ob­jec­tion is ad­miss­ible against:

a.
par­tial and fi­nal awards;
b.
in­ter­im awards on the grounds lis­ted in Art­icle 393 let­ters a and b.

Art. 393 Grounds for objection

An ar­bit­ral award may be con­tested on the fol­low­ing grounds:

a.
the single ar­bit­rat­or was ap­poin­ted or the ar­bit­ral tribunal com­posed in an ir­reg­u­lar man­ner;
b.
the ar­bit­ral tribunal wrongly de­clared it­self to have or not to have jur­is­dic­tion;
c.
the ar­bit­ral tribunal de­cided is­sues that were not sub­mit­ted to it or failed to de­cide on a pray­er for re­lief;
d.
the prin­ciples of equal treat­ment of the parties or the right to be heard were vi­ol­ated;
e.
the award is ar­bit­rary in its res­ult be­cause it is based on find­ings that are ob­vi­ously con­trary to the facts as stated in the case files or be­cause it con­sti­tutes an ob­vi­ous vi­ol­a­tion of law or equity;
f.
the costs and com­pens­a­tion fixed by the ar­bit­ral tribunal are ob­vi­ously ex­cess­ive.

Art. 394 Remit for rectification or amendment

After hear­ing the parties, the ap­pel­late court may re­mit the award to the ar­bit­ral tribunal, set­ting a dead­line to rec­ti­fy or amend it.

Art. 395 Decision

1 If the award is not re­mit­ted to the ar­bit­ral tribunal or if it is not rec­ti­fied or amended by the tribunal with­in the set dead­line, the ap­pel­late court shall de­cide and, if the ob­jec­tion is ap­proved, shall set aside the award.

2 If the award is set aside, the ar­bit­ral tribunal shall make a new award con­sist­ent with the con­sid­er­a­tions taken in­to ac­count in the de­cision to re­mit the case. If the tribunal is no longer com­plete, Art­icle 371 ap­plies.295

3 Set­ting aside may be lim­ited to cer­tain parts of the award if the oth­er parts do not de­pend on them.

4 If the ar­bit­ral award is con­tested on the grounds that the com­pens­a­tion and costs are ob­vi­ously ex­cess­ive, the ap­pel­late court may it­self de­cide on them.

295 Second sen­tence in­ser­ted by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

Chapter 2 Review

Art. 396 Grounds for review

1 A party may re­quest the or­din­ary court that has jur­is­dic­tion un­der Art­icle 356 para­graph 1 to re­view an ar­bit­ral award if:

a.296
the party, des­pite ex­er­cising due di­li­gence, sub­sequently dis­cov­ers sig­ni­fic­ant facts or de­cis­ive evid­ence that could not have been sub­mit­ted in the earli­er pro­ceed­ings; ex­cluded are facts and evid­ence that arose after the ar­bit­ral award was made;
b.
crim­in­al pro­ceed­ings have es­tab­lished that the ar­bit­ral award was in­flu­enced to the det­ri­ment of the party con­cerned by a felony or mis­de­mean­our, even if no one is con­victed by a crim­in­al court; if crim­in­al pro­ceed­ings are not pos­sible, proof may be provided in some oth­er man­ner;
c.
it is claimed that the ac­cept­ance, with­draw­al or set­tle­ment of the claim is in­val­id;
d.297
a ground for chal­lenge un­der Art­icle 367 para­graph 1 let­ter c only came to light after con­clu­sion of the ar­bit­ra­tion pro­ceed­ings des­pite ex­er­cising due di­li­gence and no oth­er leg­al rem­edy is avail­able.

2 The re­view on the grounds of a vi­ol­a­tion of the ECHR298 may be re­ques­ted if:

a.299
the European Court of Hu­man Rights has de­term­ined in a fi­nal judg­ment (Art. 44 ECHR) that the ECHR or its pro­to­cols have been vi­ol­ated, or the case has been con­cluded by means of a friendly set­tle­ment (Art. 39 ECHR);
b.
com­pens­a­tion is not an ap­pro­pri­ate rem­edy for the ef­fects of the vi­ol­a­tion; and
c.
the re­view is ne­ces­sary to rem­edy the vi­ol­a­tion.

296 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

297 In­ser­ted by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2020, in force since 1 Jan. 2021 (AS 2020 4179; BBl 2018 7163).

298 SR 0.101

299 Amended by An­nex No 2 of the FA of 1 Oct. 2021, in force since 1 Ju­ly 2022 (AS 2022 289; BBl 2021300, 889).

Art. 397 Deadlines

1 The re­quest for re­view must be filed with­in 90 days of dis­cov­ery of the grounds for re­view.

2 The right to re­quest for a re­view ex­pires 10 years after the award comes in­to force, ex­cept in cases un­der Art­icle 396 para­graph 1 let­ter b.

Art. 398 Procedure

The pro­ced­ure is gov­erned by Art­icles 330 to 331.

Art. 399 Remit to the arbitral tribunal

1 If the court ap­proves the re­quest for re­view, it shall set aside the ar­bit­ral award and re­mit the case to the ar­bit­ral tribunal for a new de­cision.

2 If the ar­bit­ral tribunal is no longer com­plete, Art­icle 371 ap­plies.

Part 4 Final Provisions

Title 1 Implementation

Art. 400 Principles

1 The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall is­sue the im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions.

2 It provides forms for court re­cords and party sub­mis­sions. The forms for the parties must be de­signed in a way that they can be com­pleted by per­sons who are not leg­ally trained.

2bis The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall provide the pub­lic with in­form­a­tion on leg­al costs and the pos­sib­il­it­ies of leg­al aid and lit­ig­a­tion fund­ing.300

3 The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may del­eg­ate re­spons­ib­il­ity for is­su­ing ad­min­is­trat­ive and tech­nic­al reg­u­la­tions and provid­ing forms and in­form­a­tion to the Fed­er­al Of­fice of Justice.301

300 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

301 Amended by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 401 Pilot projects

1 The can­tons may carry out pi­lot pro­jects with the con­sent of the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

2 The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may del­eg­ate com­pet­ence for the ap­prov­al of such pro­jects to the Fed­er­al Of­fice of Justice.

Art. 401a Statistics and business figures 302

The Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons shall work with the courts to en­sure that suf­fi­cient ba­sic stat­ist­ic­al in­form­a­tion and busi­ness fig­ures re­lated to the in­dic­at­ors for the ap­plic­a­tion of this Code are made avail­able, and in par­tic­u­lar the num­ber, type, sub­ject mat­ter, dur­a­tion and cost of the pro­ceed­ings.

302 In­ser­ted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Im­prov­ing Prac­tic­al­ity and Law En­force­ment), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Title 2 Amendment of Legislation

Art. 402 Repeal and amendment of current legislation

The re­peal and amend­ment of ex­ist­ing le­gis­la­tion is dealt with in An­nex 1.

Art. 403 Coordination provisions

The co­ordin­a­tion of this Code with pro­vi­sions of oth­er en­act­ments is dealt with in An­nex 2.

Title 3 Transitional Provisions

Chapter 1 Transitional Provisions of 19 December 2008 303

303 Inserted by No I 1 of the FA of 28 Sept. 2012 (Transcription Regulations), in force since 1 May 2013 (AS 2013 851; BBl 2012 57075719).

Art. 404 Continued application of the previous law

1 Pro­ceed­ings that are pending when this Code comes in­to force are gov­erned by the pre­vi­ous pro­ced­ur­al law un­til the close of the pro­ceed­ings be­fore the re­spect­ive in­stance.

2 Ter­rit­ori­al jur­is­dic­tion is gov­erned by the new law. However, jur­is­dic­tion con­ferred un­der the pre­vi­ous law con­tin­ues.

Art. 405 Appellate remedies

1 Ap­pel­late rem­ed­ies are gov­erned by the law in force when no­tice of the de­cision is giv­en to the parties.

2 The re­view of a de­cision no­ti­fied un­der the pre­vi­ous law is gov­erned by the new law.

Art. 406 Agreement on jurisdiction

The valid­ity of an agree­ment on jur­is­dic­tion is gov­erned by the law in force at the time of con­clu­sion of the agree­ment.

Art. 407 Arbitration

1 The valid­ity of ar­bit­ra­tion agree­ments con­cluded be­fore the com­mence­ment of this Code is gov­erned by the law that fa­vours the agree­ment.

2 Ar­bit­ra­tion pro­ceed­ings that are pending on the com­mence­ment of this Code are gov­erned by the pre­vi­ous law. The parties may, however, agree on the ap­plic­a­tion of the new law.

3 Ap­pel­late rem­ed­ies are gov­erned by the law in force when no­tice of the ar­bit­ral award is giv­en to the parties.

4 Ju­di­cial pro­ceed­ings un­der Art­icle 356 that are pending on the com­mence­ment of this Code are gov­erned by the pre­vi­ous law.

Chapter 2 Transitional Provision to the Amendment of 28 September 2012304

304 Inserted by No I 1 of the FA of 28 Sept. 2012 (Transcription Regulations), in force since 1 May 2013 (AS 2013 851; BBl 2012 57075719).

Art. 407a

In pro­ceed­ings that are pending when the Amend­ment of 28 Septem­ber 2012 to this Code comes in­to force, the new law ap­plies to pro­ced­ur­al acts from the date on which the Amend­ment comes in­to force

Chapter 3 Transitional Provision to the Amendment of 20 March 2015305

305 Inserted by Annex No 2 of the FA of 20 March 2015 (Child Maintenance), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2015 4299; BBl 2014 529).

Art. 407b

1 The new law ap­plies to pro­ceed­ings that are pending when the Amend­ment of 20 March 2015 comes in­to force.

2 New pray­ers for re­lief that are filed as a res­ult of the change in the law ap­plic­able are per­mit­ted; un­con­tested parts of a de­cision re­main bind­ing un­less they are so closely ma­ter­i­ally con­nec­ted with pray­ers for re­lief that have yet to be judged that it is reas­on­able to judge the en­tire mat­ter.

Chapter 4 Transitional Provision to the Amendment of 19 June 2015306

306 Inserted by Annex No 2 of the FA of 19 June 2015 (Equitable Division of Pensions on Divorce), in force since 1 Jan. 2017 (AS 2016 2313; BBl 2013 4887).

Art. 407c

1 The new law ap­plies to di­vorce pro­ceed­ings that are pending when the Amend­ment of 19 June 2015 comes in­to force.

2 New pray­ers for re­lief that are filed as a res­ult of the change in the law ap­plic­able are per­mit­ted; un­con­tested parts of a de­cision re­main bind­ing un­less they are so closely ma­ter­i­ally con­nec­ted with pray­ers for re­lief that have yet to be judged that it is reas­on­able to judge the en­tire mat­ter.

Chapter 5 Transitional Provision to the Amendment of 14 December 2018307

307 Inserted by No I 2 of the FA of 14 Dec. 2018 on Improving the Protection of Persons Affected by Violence, in force since 1 July 2020 (AS 2019 2273; BBl 2017 7307).

Art. 407d

The new law ap­plies to pro­ceed­ings pending when the amend­ment of 14 Decem­ber 2018 comes in­to force.

Chapter 6 Transitional Provision to the Amendment of 25 September 2020308

308 Inserted by Annex 1 No II of the Data Protection Act of 25 Sept. 2020, in force since 1 Sept. 2023 (AS 2022 491; BBl 2017 6941).

Art. 407e

The new law ap­plies to pro­ceed­ings pending when the amend­ment of 25 Septem­ber 2020 comes in­to force.

Chapter 7 Transitional Provision to the Amendment of 17 March 2023309

309 Inserted by No I of the FA of 17 March 2023 (Improving Practicality and Law Enforcement), in force since 1 Jan. 2025 (AS 2023 491; BBl 2020 2697).

Art. 407f

Art­icles 8 para­graph 2 second sen­tence, 63 para­graph 1, 118 para­graph 2 second sen­tence, 141a, 141b, 143 para­graph 1bis, 149, 167a, 170a, 176 para­graph 3, 176a, 177, 187 para­graph 1 third sen­tence and 2, 193, 198 let­ters bbis, f, h and i, 199 para­graph 3, 206 para­graph 4, 210 para­graph 1 in­tro­duct­ory sen­tence and let­ter c, 239 para­graph 1, 298 para­graph 1bis, 315 para­graphs 2-5, 317 para­graph 1bis, 318 para­graph 2, 325 para­graph 2, 327 para­graph 5 and 336 para­graphs 1 and 3 also ap­ply to pro­ceed­ings that are pending when the Amend­ment of 17 March 2023 comes in­to force.

Title 4 Referendum and Commencement

Art. 408

1 This Code is sub­ject to an op­tion­al ref­er­en­dum.

2 The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the com­mence­ment date.

Com­mence­ment Date: 1 Janu­ary 2011310

310 FCD of 31 March 2010.

Annex 1

Repeal and Amendment of Current Legislation

I. Repeal of current legislation

II. Amendment of current legislation

Annex 2

Coordination Provisions

1. Coordination of the Civil Procedure Code with the new Nuclear Energy Public Liability Act

2. Coordination of Number 19 of Annex 1 with the new NEPLA

3. Coordination with the Amendment of the Civil Code (CC) of 19 December 2008 (Protection of Adults, Law of Persons and Law on Children)