Bank accounts and pensions after a death in Switzerland

Your letter from the bank will call the account blocked, and English-language advice usually says frozen; in Switzerland the two words describe the same thing. The rule behind them comes from inheritance law: from the day of the death the money belongs to all the heirs jointly, and the bank would be liable if one of them helped themselves before the estate was divided. This is what stops, and what keeps arriving.

Two situations come up again and again. The joint account first: depending on the clause signed when it was opened, the survivor can sometimes carry on using it, though the deceased's share still belongs to the estate and will be counted when the estate is divided. Then the power of attorney over the account, the signing authority given during the holder's lifetime. It no longer allows you to act freely once the holder has died, even if the bank has yet to switch it off. Using that access can count as tacit acceptance of the estate, debts included.

Most Swiss banks will, on the other hand, settle the funeral home's invoice directly from the deceased's account on presentation of the bill, frozen account and all. No law obliges them to. The practice is well established, and it is almost never offered on its own. You have to ask.

This is the key to everything else. The certificate of inheritance (Erbbescheinigung / certificat d'héritier) proves that you are an heir: with it, the banks unfreeze the accounts and close them, and a property can be put in the heirs' names. You apply to the cantonal succession authority (Erbschaftsamt / service des successions) for the deceased's last place of residence, wherever the heirs themselves live.

A will changes the timetable. The authority has to open it first and pass it on to the heirs, then let a month go by before issuing the certificate to the heirs named in it. That month leaves room for a challenge.

Two useful habits. Ask for several original copies from the start, because every bank wants one and does not always give it back. And send in with the application everything the authority will ask for anyway: the death certificate, the family booklet, the full addresses of all the heirs. An incomplete file costs two weeks.

If it is unclear whether the estate can cover its debts, stick strictly to the costs of preserving it, and read first the part on the three-month period to accept or renounce the inheritance.

One point before everything else: these pensions are not paid out automatically. You claim them from the compensation office of the deceased's old-age and survivors' insurance (AHV / AVS). There are families who have been entitled for years without knowing it.

In 2026 the widow's or widower's pension runs from CHF 1,008 to 2,016 a month, depending on the contribution record of the person who died, and the orphan's pension from CHF 504 to 1,008. The rules for widowers changed after a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, and the law is being amended to match.

One last point: a widow's pension and an old-age pension are not paid on top of each other. The compensation office pays the higher of the two, with a widowhood supplement in certain situations.

This is the least known part of the file, and the most useful when there is no cash to hand. Some of what the person leaves never falls into the estate at all: the occupational pension (BVG / LPP), Pillar 3a and a life policy pay the survivors directly, and none of that waits for the certificate of inheritance.

In practice: telephone the pension fund and the insurer in the first week, without waiting for anything else. The claim form, the death certificate and sometimes a statement from the employer are enough to start the payment in most cases.

A simple estate is within reach of an organised family working from the templates on this page. Paid help earns its fee once several banks and pension funds are involved, when the heirs live far apart, when there is a business or a building in the estate, or simply when nobody has the time to run twenty procedures at once. A fiduciary (Treuhänder / fiduciaire) is the Swiss accounting and estate-administration firm that does this work.

Worth knowing before you sign anything: you apply for the certificate of inheritance directly to the authority, with no intermediary, and you pay the cantonal fee alone.

One letter is enough to report the death, ask for the funeral invoice to be paid and set up the closure of the accounts. Send it by registered post, signed by the known heirs. The paragraph about the funeral home's invoice is optional: keep it if the invoice has already arrived.