If the Swiss experience with trusts is notable in any way, it must be because, over the last two decades of the 20th century, we eagerly embraced a legal institution with so few roots in the recent civil law tradition, and we did so without purporting to create an equivalent instrument under Swiss law. Why and how we embraced it, what difficulties we faced in doing so, what came out of it and what awaits us in the future are points that are worthy of interest.