Is a family foundation for you? Ten questions I ask at the first meeting

1. Are you thinking about your assets over generations rather than the next few years?

   A family foundation is a tool for decades. The Act gives it three tasks: to accumulate assets, to manage them in the interest of the beneficiaries and to make distributions to them (Article 2 of the Family Foundation Act – ustawa o fundacji rodzinnej). If you plan to sell your business within two or three years, a foundation is not the tool for that. Already today, the sale of assets acquired solely for resale falls outside the tax exemption, and from 2027 – if the new act enters into force – a two-year holding period will apply to contributed assets.

2. Does the value of your assets justify the cost of the structure?

   The statutory minimum founding fund is PLN 100,000 (Article 17). But a foundation has fixed costs: the notary, accounting, servicing its bodies, and an audit carried out at least once every four years (Article 79). In practice, the numbers start to add up with assets measured in millions of zlotys, not hundreds of thousands.

3. Do you know who should be a beneficiary – and who should not?

   A beneficiary may be a natural person, including you, or a non-governmental organisation. The hardest decisions concern not the children, but the children's spouses, future grandchildren and the child who does not work in the business. If you cannot settle this today, the statute will settle it for you – not necessarily the way you would want.

4. Do you want to keep control during your lifetime or hand it over straight away?

   The founder may sit on the management board, be a beneficiary and reserve broad powers in the statute. He or she may also hand over the helm from the start. Both models are lawful, but each requires a different statute, a different supervisory board and a different plan for the day you are no longer there.

5. Are there tensions in your family that will erupt after your death?

   A foundation puts property relations in order, but it does not heal them. If conflict is likely, the statute must anticipate it: a supervisory board with a person from outside the family, clear rules for amending the statute, a mediation or arbitration clause. A foundation without such mechanisms becomes the arena of the dispute rather than a barrier against it.

6. Are your assets mainly a business, real estate or capital?

   Any type of asset can be contributed, but each raises different questions. An operating business stays in the company, and the foundation becomes its shareholder – the relationship between the statute and the articles of association is then key (more). Renting out real estate is a permitted activity (Article 5(1)(2)), but short-term rental is likely to lose its tax preference from 2027.

7. Do you have liabilities or disputes that creditors could raise?

   The foundation is jointly and severally liable with the founder for his or her debts incurred before the foundation was established, including maintenance obligations, and this liability cannot be excluded without the creditor's consent (Article 8(1)). It is limited to the value of the assets contributed by the founder (Article 9) – that is, exactly the assets you wanted to protect. A creditor may also bring an actio Pauliana (skarga pauliańska). A foundation protects assets against future risk, not against existing debts (more on the limits of protection).

8. Are you counting on the foundation to "switch off" the forced share?

   It will not. The founding fund contributed within ten years before the founder's death is added to the estate when the forced share (zachowek) is calculated, and distributions from the foundation count towards a beneficiary's forced share (Articles 993, 994¹ and 996 of the Polish Civil Code). Two new tools exist, however: an agreement waiving the right to the forced share alone (Article 1048 § 2 of the Civil Code) and the possibility of deferring the forced share, spreading it into instalments and, exceptionally, reducing it (Article 997¹ of the Civil Code). The forced share is planned with the family, not against it.

9. Are you prepared for a foundation "in organisation" for a year or longer?

   The register is kept by a single court for the whole of Poland – the Regional Court in Piotrków Trybunalski – and it has a backlog of many months. In summer 2026 more than 3,200 foundations were waiting for entry. A foundation in organisation can already acquire rights and incur obligations (Article 23(3)), but some banks refuse to open an account for it before registration. This period has to be planned, not sat out (how to do it).

10. Do you accept that the tax law on foundations will keep changing?

    In 2025 the Sejm passed a tightening that the President vetoed. In 2026 it passed another, which awaits his decision. Anyone who sets up a foundation solely for today's tax rate is doing it for the wrong reason. Anyone who sets it up for the continuity of the family's assets will cope with a rate change from 15 to 19 per cent (law monitor).

Law as of: 8 November 2026. The text is for information only and is not legal advice in an individual matter.