Family Wealth Planning

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Barbara Dauner-Lieb
• Subject Area: Private Law
• Term: from 2015 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 281070100

The research project subject of this application is about making financial provisions for more than just oneself as well as inter-generational preservation of overall assets in the family and for the family. The implementation of this objective in legal structures will be referred to as family wealth planning; this working title for the concept is intended to cover both the process of what to consider when planning and the decisions taken and the legal results thereof. Financial provisions for the future are in principle desirable from a macroeconomic point of view since they relieve the strain on the social welfare system. However, there are reservations in this respect regarding the perpetuation of wealth. This may explain why there is no legal structure providing a model for wealth planning. Wealth planning is therefore organised privately and autonomously and is thus dealt with in terms of preventive or defensive advice in legal practice.The core research question is whether and to what extent the individual is free or should be free to set up his wealth in the long term as family wealth both for his lifetime and beyond and, from the other perspective, what limits exist in this respect or should exist. The decisive turning point de lege lata is, besides when marriage or partnerships end, death. Fundamental freedom of testation is actually limited by the reserved portions for next relatives under the law of obligations. If there are not sufficient funds to satisfy the reserved portions and if those entitled to such refuse to waive their portion, the family wealth planning cannot succeed. Of course attempts are made proactively to defuse this succession law limitation and to circumvent it; a special role in this respect is played by the institution of foundations. The issue of how legally resilient the corresponding structures are is ever present. Academics have, until now, only looked in isolation at individual questions regarding family wealth planning and then dealt with such under company law (succession), succession law (entitlement to supplement reserved portion) or family law (consequences of divorce); the dominant perspective is usually that of the entitlements of the individual legal person . However, as yet there has been no overall examination and analysis from the perspective of forward planning. Precisely this in relation to Austria, Switzerland and Germany is the aim of this project. The questions that arise will be looked at, analysed and structured in the overall context of forward-facing family wealth planning with the help of a questionnaire and on the basis of typologised case studies initially for these three legal systems; a comparative law study for the German-speaking countries should then be undertaken on this basis.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Astrid Deixler-Hübner; Professorin Dr. Susanne Kalss
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Martin Schauer