The term ‘family trusts’ often refers to a form of discretionary trust in which the beneficiaries of the trust have no fixed entitlements to either income or capital. For the purpose of this article, we will refer to discretionary trusts as family trusts. The trustee of a family trust generally...

January is well known for its New Year’s resolutions. We all make them and most of us break them before the month is even out. If preparing a new Will or updating an old Will is one of your 2021 New Year resolutions, do not let it be one of...

When talking estate planning with our clients, we often encounter scenarios where simply drafting a will on its own is not enough to deal with their affairs. This is usually in circumstances where the client has: a family trust, self-managed superannuation fund or a business. If you fall into these...

When it comes to estates, there is an old saying, ‘where there’s a Will, there are 400 relatives’. We would all like to think that when we make a Will, respect will be given to our testamentary wishes upon our deaths. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. The Family...

Western Australia’s Family Provision Act legislation is often criticised as allowing for ‘litigious interference’ in a will maker’s final decisions about their estate. However, a recent decision by the Supreme Court of Western Australia has reaffirmed the benefits of this legislation in allowing the Court to ‘rebalance’ the effects of...