Swiss Civil Code

¹ Where the miss­ing per­son’s prop­erty or suc­ces­sion rights have been un­der of­fi­cial ad­min­is­tra­tion for ten years or more, or he or she would have reached the age of 100, at the re­quest of the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity the de­clar­a­tion of pre­sumed death is pro­nounced ex of­fi­cio.

² If no right­ful heirs come for­ward dur­ing the pub­lic no­tice peri­od, the prop­erty of the per­son pre­sumed dead passes to the state au­thor­ity with right to suc­ceed or, if he or she was nev­er res­id­ent in Switzer­land, to the can­ton of ori­gin.

³ The loc­al au­thor­ity or can­ton con­cerned has the same duty of resti­tu­tion as those put in pos­ses­sion of the es­tate to­wards the per­son pre­sumed dead and parties with pre­vail­ing claims.