Writing a Will in Switzerland: Holograph, Public and Emergency Forms

A will is the only way a person in Switzerland can direct their estate beyond the default intestate rules and beyond the compulsory shares that protect certain heirs. Swiss law recognizes a small, fixed set of valid forms, and getting the form wrong is one of the most common ways a will fails. This page works through the two ordinary forms, the emergency form, how revocation works, and what happens when no valid will exists at all.

It is part of our wider Swiss inheritance law coverage, itself part of the broader guide to Swiss law.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Swiss law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

The two ordinary ways to make a valid Swiss will

Swiss law under the ZGB recognizes two ordinary ways to make a will, plus one emergency form reserved for genuinely extraordinary situations. The two ordinary forms are the eigenhändige letztwillige Verfügung, the holograph or handwritten will under Art. 505 ZGB, and the öffentliche letztwillige Verfügung, the public will made before an official or notary under Art. 499 ZGB.

Both forms are equally valid legally. The choice between them is mostly practical: a holograph will costs nothing and can be written anywhere, while a public will involves an official and two witnesses but leaves less room for a formal mistake to undo it later.

The holograph will: every word by hand

Art. 505 ZGB sets an exact requirement. The will must be written by the testator's own hand from beginning to end, including the year, month and day it was drafted, and it must carry the testator's signature.

There is no prescribed wording and no required form beyond this. A single handwritten page stating who receives what, dated and signed, satisfies Art. 505 ZGB on its own.

Cantons are also required to let a person deposit a holograph will, sealed or open, with an official body for safekeeping. This is optional, not a validity requirement, but it solves the practical problem of a handwritten document being lost, altered, or simply never found after death.

What actually invalidates a holograph will

Two defects are common and both are fatal in the ordinary run of cases. Typing or printing any part of the will, rather than writing every word by hand, is a formal defect. So is a will with no signature at all.

Neither defect makes the will automatically void the instant it is written. Under Art. 520 ZGB, a will with a formal defect like these is only invalidated once someone files a suit challenging it, which means an unchallenged will with a defect can still take effect if no one contests it.

That challenge has its own time limit under Art. 521 ZGB. It must generally be brought within one year of the person learning of the will and of the ground for invalidity, and in any case no later than ten years after the will was disclosed.

The dating defect gets its own, more forgiving rule

A missing or incorrect date is common enough that the ZGB addresses it separately, in Art. 520a. Unlike the general defects above, a dating problem invalidates the will only under two combined conditions.

The needed date information must be impossible to establish some other way, and the date must actually matter, for example to assess whether the testator had capacity at the time, or to determine which of several wills came later. A harmless dating slip on an otherwise clear will, where the date does not affect either of these questions, is not fatal on its own.

The public will: two witnesses, before an official or notary

Art. 499 ZGB requires a public will to be made with two witnesses present, before an official, a notary, or another person authorized under cantonal law to handle this kind of document. Under Art. 500 ZGB, the official or notary drafts the will, or has it drafted, from the testator's own instructions, reads it back to the testator, and has the testator sign it, with the official then dating and co-signing it as well.

This form leaves far less room for the kind of formal defect that undoes a holograph will, since the official handling it is responsible for getting the form right. It is the form most often used where an estate is complex, where a testator's capacity might later be questioned, or where a testator simply wants the certainty of professional involvement.

The Nottestament: an emergency form, not a shortcut

Art. 506 ZGB allows a purely oral will, but only where extraordinary circumstances, such as imminent mortal danger, a blockade, an epidemic, or war conditions, genuinely prevent the testator from using either of the two ordinary forms. It is not available simply because writing a holograph will or arranging a public will would be inconvenient.

To make one, the testator declares their last wishes before two witnesses and instructs them to arrange for the will's proper certification afterward. The same rules disqualifying certain witnesses from a public will also apply here.

Revoking a will

A will can be revoked at any time, and Art. 509 ZGB allows revocation in any of the valid forms, not necessarily the same form the will was originally made in. A holograph will can revoke an earlier public will, and the reverse is also true.

Destroying the physical document is itself a valid way to revoke a will under Art. 510 ZGB. If the document is destroyed by accident or by someone else's fault, the will still loses effect unless its exact content can be established completely, though a claim for damages may remain available.

Making a new will does not automatically cancel an earlier one in every case. Under Art. 511 ZGB, a later will replaces an earlier one only to the extent the two conflict, unless the later document is clearly meant only as a supplement to the first.

A worked example: what a valid holograph will actually needs

Picture a person who wants to leave a specific painting to a friend and the rest of their estate divided between their two children. Written entirely in the testator's own hand, the document could read as a single dated, signed page naming the friend, describing the painting, and stating that the remainder is to be split equally between the two named children.

Every element Art. 505 ZGB requires is present: it is handwritten start to finish, it carries the day, month and year it was written, and it ends with the testator's signature. Nothing about the content needs to follow a particular script or legal phrasing for the will itself to be formally valid.

This is illustrative of the required elements, not a template to copy. A will that touches a complex estate, a blended family, a business, or property in more than one country is exactly the situation where working with a notary is worth the cost of the public will form, rather than relying on a handwritten document alone.

What happens with no will at all

Where no valid will exists, the ZGB's intestate rules apply automatically, and they follow a parentelic structure: descendants take first, then, only if there are none, the deceased's parents and their own descendants, and so on outward through more distant relatives.

Under Art. 457 ZGB, children divide the estate equally between themselves, and a predeceased child's own children step into their share. Under Art. 462 ZGB, a surviving spouse or registered partner takes one half of the estate when sharing with descendants, three quarters when sharing with the parental line and no descendants exist, or the entire estate if neither descendants nor any parental line relative survives.

Where the compulsory share limits come from

A will, in any of the forms above, still cannot cross the compulsory shares reserved for certain heirs. Those fractions changed substantially in a reform that took effect 1 January 2023, and are covered in full, including a worked example by family shape, on our 2023 inheritance reform page.