I've heard various stories about cantons confiscating children from parents who didn't pay their health insurance bills on time.


Is this a fact and can anybody provide references or links?


Is it simply an urban myth or in contemporary language, was it fake news?


Or is it somewhere in between, for example, did the Swiss try to enact such a law in a referendum that failed?

Fake news
Unpaid health insurance invoices will lead to refusal to reimburse non-essential health care, but you're not going to be left dying on the street and have your kids taken from you.

Can you link to any of these stories?

Confiscating? What are they doing with them? Store them in the police's evidence locker and auction them later to the highest bidder (they can be used as chimney sweeps, farm hands, or carpet weavers) or simply destroy them when no longer needed (the little shitters properly died of starvation or from the drugs the nibbled on)?

Where have you heard various stories?

Oh, and welcome to the forum, interesting first post.

Putting them to work on farms.

I think the OP is getting a bit of fact (from not so long ago) mixed with some fiction.

This isn't the US and the OP probably isn't from Central America.

Nah.... we just make them walk to schools on their own.

What is true - at the moment, there are trying to change the law - is that the children will be held responsible for the unpaid health insurance premiums once they earn money. So they might have a lot of debts they need to pay that they themselves did not occur.

I think its right that they are trying to change that. Children shouldn't be held responsible for their parents. At least that's my opinion.

Not fake news. Not news at all. Simple invention by you or someone pulling your leg.

Wannabe Fleet St. hack fishing for stories?

Wow interesting, and here's a story on it: https://lenews.ch/2017/05/24/big-deb...surance-bills/

How can they even enforce that - if the child hasn't signed a contract with the company, how could the company have legal standing to claim off them?

I completely agree that children shouldn't be liable for debts incurred by a contract their parents signed before the age of 18.

Don't feed them, trolls reproduce via post replies.

I agree, but actually the topic is quite interesting regarding the debt point.

The mods have big enough troll guns to deal with a repeat offence

Agree with you. But that article is VEEEERY vague. They only say:

As far as I know, most countries don't allow isolated debt to be inherited (that is, unless you also inherit assets the value of which could cover those debts). In other words, in the lenews.ch article, an 18 year old could very well have inherited both assets from her mother, with a value of Fr. 100'000, and a Fr. 24'000 debt, that she would have to pay from the liquidated assets. As least that's how it works back where I come from.

- Legal guardians of the child have by law power of attorney.
- Health insurance contract runs on the name of the child.

Put the two together and you get said shitty situation.

I'm pretty sure not feeding them will get kids taken away, and troll health insurance is notorious for it's small print due to their regenerative characteristics.

Same here. You can either accept or deny an inheritance. If you accept (which is the default if you do nothing) you will take over the estate with all the assets but also all liabilities/debts. If you deny you get none of the assets, not even a single piece of pocket lint, but also none of the debts.

I would expect that if you accept, you can only absorb any debt UP TO the value of the assets you inherited.

There are many inverse loopholes like this in Switzerland


Youths living in these hostels have to give up about 90% of any income from apprenticeships to pay for the room and board.



Another one of these situations arises with Quellensteuer. If your employer doesn't remit the correct amounts to the Kanton, nobody will tell you, they just bill you for the difference and you may end up overpaying. Even worse if your employer went bust due to Covid: any Quellensteuer that they deducted from your payroll in 2019 or 2020 may not have been delivered to the tax office. The Kanton will pursue you personally for this debt, even though the money was already deducted by your employer. This email from a Kanton suggests somebody to go and sue their employer for the money:



Back to the original topic, many countries have a mechanism to put children in state care if parents are genuinely unable to look after them. Whether such provisions apply to non-payment of KVG is another thing. I put "fact or faction" in the subject to make it clear I'm not pushing either side. If Kantons taking children and putting them in Hostel/Kinderheim/foyer is not true then a thread like this is a worthy place to put it to rest.

Nah. The way some newbies try to quote or multiquote can be original..