Estate Planning

Two important changes were made to Queensland’s Succession laws on 5 June 2017: (1)  The end of a defacto relationship is now treated the same as the end of a marriage (2) Step-children are now eligible to make a claim on the estate of their step-parent

When a personal relationship breaks down, your life changes.  A relationship breakdown means that you have to redesign your future plans. Whilst an unwanted experience, it is the perfect time to make the changes to protect your future.

There are no excuses for not having a Will! You may recognise some of these "reasons" for not organising your estate planning arrangements. Buy when you think about it, you owe it to your family to get organised.

The contents of your parents’ Wills are none of your business. However, the risk of losing your inheritance means that there may be very good reasons for a discussion about your parents' estate planning arrangements.

In today's article, we highlight some diabolical stories where the children of the founders of the Trust have abused an opportunity to seize control of the assets of the Trust - to the utter and absolute dismay of their surviving parent.

Where you own property jointly with one or more other people, careful attention is needed for every property to ensure that your estate planning intentions are carried into effect.

The opportunity to dramatically improve the lives of their children with proper estate planning is being taken by an increasing number of Australian parents. There may very good reasons why you should take action now to implement some simple estate planning arrangements.  The benefit to your children could be minimal, or could be worth hundreds of thousand of dollars, depending on your family's circumstances.

A standard Will is no longer suitable for many Australians.   Unfortunately, they are usually not even aware that they may have a future problem.  Even if they are aware of these problems, they don't realise that there may be some effective solutions.