Dr. iur. Heinz Heller
Attorney|Specialist Lawyer SBA Family Law
058 455 77 00|

Are you look­ing for a most com­pe­tent lawyer in fam­i­ly law? Then you have come to the right place. The title «Spe­cial­ist Lawyer SBA Fam­i­ly Law» guar­an­tees ver­i­fi­able spe­cial­iza­tion.

I rep­re­sent par­ties in the whole of Ger­man-speak­ing Switzer­land. Because all courts apply the same law in fam­i­ly law. Or maybe you are already served by a well-found­ed one-time consultation?

Call and lis­ten to your gut feel. I will take my time for you, or call you back as soon as I hear from your call.

Among Spe­cial­ist Lawyers SBA, there are dif­fer­ences. Many remain gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­ers with a Spe­cial­ist-Lawyer-SBA title. There, I am dif­fer­ent. I love the com­plex­i­ty and diver­si­ty of this fas­ci­nat­ing field of law and prac­tice fam­i­ly law with pas­sion. In addi­tion, the judi­cia­ry in fam­i­ly law has the rep­u­ta­tion of sim­ply being a bit more «human» and solu­tion-ori­ent­ed than in oth­er areas.

Based on my spe­cif­ic career and thanks to rec­om­men­da­tions, as a Spe­cial­ist Lawyer SBA Fam­i­ly Law I have fur­ther spe­cial­ized in com­pli­cat­ed vari­able incomes as well as com­plex assets. You can expect more from me, espe­cial­ly when it comes to divorces with entre­pre­neurs involved: sad­dle firm­ness in account­ing law and income struc­tur­ing; deep-root­ed agili­ty in ques­tions of fair val­ue esti­ma­tions of the assets of an enter­prise; quite gen­er­al­ly sound SME-busi­ness knowl­edge (see also menu item «About me»).

One-time consultation

Often, those seek­ing legal advice are already well helped by a  pro­found one-time con­sul­ta­tion. Togeth­er with you, Dr. Heller cre­ates a «big pic­ture» of the giv­en mar­riage or fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tion. Togeth­er we con­sid­er legal options and think about max­i­mum, but above all opti­mal solu­tions. In most cas­es, ini­tial non-bind­ing cal­cu­la­tion sketch­es are also possible.

One-time con­sul­ta­tions cost CHF 500.00 in cash against receipt, regard­less of the time involved. They are car­ried out with­out pre­lim­i­nary con­sul­ta­tion or fol­low-up. In view of a pos­si­ble longer coop­er­a­tion, one-time con­sul­ta­tions give you a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to test the «chem­istry» between you and Dr. Heller as well as his skills.

Divorces with entre­pre­neurs involved

Divorces of entre­pre­neurs afford spe­cif­ic legal com­pe­tence. In an (Ger­man) arti­cle pub­lished in the Jour­nal of the Swiss Bar Asso­ci­a­tion Dr. Heller described for exam­ple the fol­low­ing require­ments (trans­lat­ed in English):

„Entre­pre­neur-divorces – lawyers with busi­ness knowl­edge demand­ed: The deter­min­ing of the income of entre­pre­neurs can, as the Swiss Fed­er­al Court stat­ed, prove to be ‘utter­ly dif­fi­cult’. If the state­ments or doc­u­ments of the entre­pre­neur-hus­band are not con­clu­sive or not con­vinc­ing, then the stan­dard of liv­ing last­ly lived togeth­er by the mar­ried cou­ple can be  indica­tive of the cor­re­lat­ing income of the entrepreneur-husband.

Deal­ing with entre­pre­neur-divorces I con­stant­ly am con­front­ed with accu­sa­tions of the oppos­ing par­ty, the entre­pre­neur-hus­band would prac­tice a ‘poor-mouthing accoun­tan­cy’. Name­ly prof­it would be dimin­ished by blown up cush­ions, and pri­vate liv­ing costs would be paid by the com­pa­ny of the entre­pre­neur. Now the lawyer of the entre­pre­neur must argue based on busi­ness knowl­edge, he must defend busi­ness deci­sions or be able to explain the dif­fer­ence between a share­hold­ers account and alleged­ly ‘liv­ing costs paid by the husband’s com­pa­ny’. And he must know how to par­ry the request [of the oppos­ing lawyer] the entre­pre­neur-hus­band shall – besides annu­al accounts on bal­ance – sub­mit all account sheets and account­ing vouch­ers in their entire­ty. Because, the entre­pre­neur-hus­band (and his com­pa­ny respec­tive­ly) do have to sub­mit account­ing sheets and vouch­ers only if the oppos­ing lawyer is able to com­pre­hen­si­bly sub­stan­ti­ate an accord­ing infor­ma­tion gap. Gen­er­al­ly it seems that quite some lawyers are con­fused by the dif­fer­ence between requests for edi­tion of proof doc­u­ments and requests for pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion, where­as the lat­ter do seem Span­ish to them.”

Why a Specialist Lawyer SBA?

For all those who google «best divorce lawyer» or «top lawyer fam­i­ly law»: The title «Spe­cial­ist Lawyer SBA» is a lawyer rank­ing you can rely on. This is because the title guar­an­tees ver­i­fi­able spe­cial­iza­tion with a bind­ing duty of con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion. The Swiss Bar Asso­ci­a­tion SBA empha­sizes on its web­site sav-fsa.ch that the title «Spe­cial­ist Lawyer SBA» is «a seal of qual­i­ty for spe­cif­ic legal advice — com­pa­ra­ble, for exam­ple, to the ‘Spe­cial­ist FMH’ in medicine.»

Prospec­tive Spe­cial­ist Lawyers SBA pass a rig­or­ous selec­tion pro­ce­dure (proof of expe­ri­ence). This is fol­lowed by a uni­ver­si­ty course includ­ing a final exam­i­na­tion. Only after a fur­ther admis­sion exam­i­na­tion by the Swiss Bar Asso­ci­a­tion SBA, the cer­ti­fied title is award­ed. For every 13,000 lawyers prac­tic­ing in Switzer­land, only about one in a hun­dred qual­i­fies as an Spe­cial­ist Lawyer SBA Employ­ment Law. Don’t set­tle for any­thing less.

Many peo­ple seek­ing legal advice in fam­i­ly law attach impor­tance to the gen­der of their lawyer. Only about one third of all Swiss Spe­cial­ist Lawyers SBA Fam­i­ly Law are men.

Hourly rates of a Specialist Lawyer SBA

No ques­tion, the Spe­cial­ist Lawyer SBA charges his price. Nev­er­the­less, in ret­ro­spec­tive, he is often «cheap­er» on bal­ance than, for exam­ple, a gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er. In effect, the num­ber of hours charged is more impor­tant than the hourly rate:

Few­er attor­ney hours x high­er hourly rate is more cost effec­tive than many attor­ney hours x low­er hourly rate.

Time-con­sum­ing legal research or tak­ing the argu­men­ta­tive­ly obvi­ous­ly wrong direc­tion can make a man­date mas­sive­ly more expen­sive. This dan­ger is sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced with Spe­cial­ist Lawyers SBA, thanks to their pro­found spe­cial­ist knowl­edge and trained eye for the essen­tials. The Swiss Bar Asso­ci­a­tion SAV informs on sav-fsa.ch, lawyers with a title «Spe­cial­ist Lawyer SBA» often­times could address the clients con­cerns «more quick­ly and effec­tive­ly.»

On the oth­er hand, not every legal prob­lem needs a lawyer who is among the top in the rel­e­vant field of law. Even young and less expe­ri­enced lawyers can make up for a lack of expe­ri­ence with a high lev­el of com­mit­ment, at least in the area of legal the­o­ry. So think care­ful­ly about which lawyer is best for you.

Heller Attorney’s Ltd
Heller Attorney’s Ltd is encor­po­rat­ed as Lim­it­ed com­pa­ny because in ear­li­er years it staffed sev­er­al lawyers – and because this remains an option for the future. Fur­ther­more, Heller Attorney’s Ltd runs two offices (city of Zurich, Wän­gi TG close to Win­terthur). Man­dates are to be entered with Heller Attorney’s Ltd, and are exe­cut­ed by Dr. Heller personally.