Swiss Civil Code

¹ The com­pet­ent fed­er­al or can­ton­al au­thor­ity shall amend the ob­jects of the found­a­tion or its or­gan­isa­tion­al form at the founder’s re­quest or in ac­cord­ance with his or her test­a­ment­ary dis­pos­i­tion, provided that the charter re­serves the right to amend the ob­jects or the or­gan­isa­tion­al form and that at least ten years have elapsed since the found­a­tion was es­tab­lished or since the last amend­ment to the ob­jects or the or­gan­isa­tion­al form was re­ques­ted by the founder. The lim­it­a­tion peri­ods run in­de­pend­ently of each oth­er.¹²³

² Where the found­a­tion pur­sues pub­lic or char­it­able ob­jects with­in the mean­ing of Art­icle 56 let­ter g of the Fed­er­al Act of 14 Decem­ber 1990 on Dir­ect Fed­er­al Tax­a­tion¹²⁴, such new ob­jects must like­wise be pub­lic or char­it­able.

³ The right to amend a found­a­tion’s ob­jects or or­gan­isa­tion­al form is neither trans­fer­able nor her­it­able.¹²⁵ If the founder is a leg­al en­tity, the right ex­tin­guishes at the latest 20 years after the es­tab­lish­ment of the found­a­tion.

⁴ Joint founders may only jointly re­quest an amend­ment of the found­a­tion’s ob­jects or or­gan­isa­tion­al form.¹²⁶

⁵ The pro­bate au­thor­ity shall in­form the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity of any test­a­ment­ary dis­pos­i­tion con­cern­ing the amend­ment of the found­a­tion’s ob­jects or or­gan­isa­tion­al form.¹²⁷