Who will inherit you if you remain inactive?
If you die intestate, without a will or inheritance contract (aka contract of succession) (so-called testamentary disposition upon death), the statutory succession applies. The law determines who will inherit you (so-called legal or statutory heirs) and with what share (so-called inheritance quota). The revised inheritance law does not affect the statutory succession law.
Blood relatives, your surviving spouse or registered partner
Your blood relatives and the surviving spouse or registered partner are considered legal heirs.
Lineage is based on kinship. Your offspring are descended from you, you from parents, they from grandparents. This can be documented in a family tree.
Related heirs
In the case of blood relatives, a distinction is made between three lines: the descendants, the parental and the grandparental relatives.
Issue
Your issue are your nearest heirs (cf. Art. 457 para. 1 Swiss Civil Code). If a child is predeceased, its issue takes his or her place in all degrees per stirpes (so-called principle of entry). The first line thus includes the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren as well as the great-great-grandchildren.
Parental line
If you are not survived by any issue, the inheritance passes to the parental line and all persons descended from your parents (cf. Art. 458 CC), thus sister/brother, nice/nephew. The father and mother each inherit one-half of the estate. If there are no issue on one side, the entire estate passes on to the heirs on the other.
Grandparental line
Your inheritance passes to the grandparental line (grandmother/grandfather, aunt/uncle, cousin) if you have no first or second line heirs and you also leave no surviving spouse or registered partner.
State authority
The succession rights of relatives conclude with the line of grandparents (cf. Art. 460 CC). In the absence of heirs, the estate passes to the canton or the municipality (Art. 466 CC).
What does that mean exactly?
As long as you have children, the other, more distant lines are left empty-handed. Children inherit in equal shares (so-called principle of equality).
Your children and spouse or registered partner will inherit you if they outlive you. If a person has died without descendants of his own, his share accrues in equal shares to the co-heirs of the same level (so-called principle of accrual). Parents, grandparents or the state thus take their place.
Your life partner, cohabiting partner, stepchild or foster child are not legal heirs.
Active estate planning
Last will and testament
If this does not correspond to your ideas and wishes, you have to become active and, for example, make a will.