Jersey or Geneva for a Trust? A Case Study in Jurisdiction Choice

This case study on trust jurisdiction choice is fictional. The family, the assets and the advisers are invented to show how a decision is reasoned, not to describe a real client or to predict your own result. Whether a seat suits you depends on where you and your beneficiaries live, what you hold and which courts could one day be involved, so any real decision needs an individual analysis.

The family and the question

Imagine a family we will call the Verdons. The settlor, a retired founder, lives in Lausanne. Two adult children live in different countries, and a third lives in the same canton as the settlor. The estate is made up of a portfolio of listed securities, an interest in a family company and a holiday property abroad. The settlor wants a discretionary trust so that decisions about distributions stay in careful hands after their death, and so that the family is not forced to divide everything at once.

The question put to the advisers was narrow: should the trust be seated in Jersey, a long-established common-law trust centre, or in Geneva, where a regulated trustee would administer a trust governed by foreign law? The family did not ask which place is "better". They asked which seat fits their facts, with the fewest surprises.

Note what this case deliberately leaves aside. It does not walk through how to pick or replace a trustee, and it does not cover succession planning under the law of a particular country. Those topics matter, but they sit outside this comparison.

Separating three questions first

The advisers began by splitting the decision in three, because families often blur them. The governing law versus seat distinction is the first one: the law that governs the trust deed is not automatically the place where the trust is run. The second is where the trustee and the assets are located. The third is where the settlor and beneficiaries are tax-resident, which a seat choice does not change. The page on confusing governing law, seat and residence shows how often these are mixed up.

For the Verdons, the likely governing law could be chosen independently of the seat. That meant a Geneva-administered trust could still be governed by a foreign trust statute, which is exactly why the comparison was worth doing.

The structure under review

The point of the diagram is discipline: both options are tested against one list, in the same order, by the same people. A comparison where each seat gets its own criteria is a sales pitch, not an analysis.

The scorecard

The advisers used qualitative ratings only. There are no numerical scores, because a number would suggest a precision that legal comparisons do not have. The criteria echo the method in how to choose a trust jurisdiction.

Two rows deserve comment. On privacy and registers, neither seat can be scored with confidence without checking the current rules, because register and reporting regimes change. Read trust registers and privacy before leaning on this row. On courts, the table does not say that one place litigates better; it says that familiarity with trust disputes differs from familiarity with commercial disputes.

What the facts of Swiss law add

Switzerland is not a native trust jurisdiction, and it is important to be accurate about what that means. Switzerland signed the Hague Convention of 1 July 1985 on the law applicable to trusts and on their recognition on 3 April 2007, ratified it on 26 April 2007, and it entered into force for Switzerland on 1 July 2007. The Federal Office of Justice confirms that foreign trusts have been recognised in Switzerland since that date. Trusts are dealt with by Article 149c of the Swiss Private International Law Act (PILA), which refers to the Convention for the applicable law. The Convention is classified as RS 0.221.371. See Switzerland as a trust seat for the strengths and limits in more detail.

There is a caveat the family needed to hear. Article 15 of the Convention preserves mandatory rules on succession rights. The revised Swiss inheritance law, in force since 1 January 2023, changed the picture for heirs: under Article 471 of the Civil Code the reserved portion is half of the statutory entitlement, and under Article 470, paragraph 1, it concerns a person who leaves descendants, a spouse or a registered partner. Parents are no longer reserved heirs. The Federal Office of Justice presents the reform as allowing people to dispose freely of a larger share of their assets. For the Verdons, this means a trust does not simply switch off forced heirship rules. The wider topic is covered in forced heirship and trusts.

The amendment of the PILA on international successions takes effect on 1 January 2025, according to the Federal Council decision of 26 June 2024. Anyone reading this page after that date should check how it interacts with their own facts.

How each seat fared

Jersey scored strongest on the depth of its trust law and on the experience of its courts with trust questions. Its weakness for this family was distance: meetings, signatures and day-to-day relations with the settlor in Lausanne would run at a longer range.

Geneva scored strongest on proximity and on banking. A trust administered there would sit near the settlor, near the custodian of the portfolio, and under a trustee supervised by the Swiss financial regulator. Its weakness was the one every civil-law seat shares: the trust law itself comes from elsewhere, and Swiss mandatory rules, especially on succession, remain in the background.

Neither column won every row. That is normal, and it is the most useful thing the case shows.

The outcome

The Verdons chose Geneva for administration, with a foreign trust statute as the governing law, and they kept Jersey as a documented alternative. Three reasons carried the decision:

• the settlor's wish for regular, personal contact with the trustee;
• the location of the custodian and of most of the investment decisions;
• the preference of the children living nearby to reach the trustee easily.

The advisers also wrote down what would reopen the question: a change of residence by the settlor, a shift in the family's assets toward another country, or a legal reform at either seat. The annual jurisdiction review checklist is the kind of tool used for that.

Limits of this case

This is an illustration, not a recommendation. A different family with a US-connected settlor, an operating business held in the trust or a strong need for specialised trust litigation might reach the opposite result. The same exercise run for Jersey against Switzerland in the abstract cannot replace one run on your actual facts. If the family's circumstances change, relocating an existing trust is one of the paths available.