Resumen de Successions internationales et (sémi-)loi fédérale sur le droit international privé : quelques défis
More human beings than ever before give their property a cross-border dimensions by maintaining assets in multiple countries. Treaties on free movement of persons as well as tax and economic cooperation treaties are a testament to the growing propensity by State communities to facilitate mobility and multi-nationalisation of the wealth of their citizens. Just a cross-border estates can only arise through inter-country coordination, determining how cross-border estates will devolve upon death necessarily demands a similar coordination. A self-declared « law » emanating from a single country, such as the Swiss « LDIP », whose binding effect is confined within the Swiss territory, cannot alone pretend to govern succesions that are precisely cross-border, i.e. multi-territorial, but it's a « semi-law » at best that has to harmonise with that of the other countries involved. Otherwise, conflicts of laws, jurisdictions and judgments threaten to arise and the resulting legal disorder ends up hampering estate planning by property owners, stimulating wars among their survivors and potentially discouraging human beings from moving and investing across borders.
