Estate Planning

Building up assets like your home, holiday house and investments takes a lot of hard work over many years. Consequently, most people want to ensure that when they are gone, their assets are distributed to those closest to them.

Estate planning is the process of setting up an orderly disposition of a person's assets after death, so as to limit or avoid legal and financial complications, excessive fees and expenses, but most often, taxes.

An estate plan should:

• be administratively simple to operate;
• not be too expensive to maintain;
• balance life-time enjoyment of assets / income with preserving assets for family after death; and
• be regularly reviewed.

You should expect a number of professionals to be involved in the estate planning process as proper estate planning requires the expertise offered by a solicitor and accountant in conjunction with the guidance of a financial planner.

Why use an Estate Planning Service?

Our financial planners will identify those estate planning issues that are most relevant to you. This may include some or all of the following topics:

• Wills and testamentary trusts
• Enduring power(s) of attorney
• Enduring guardianship(s)
• Nomination of beneficiaries

In addition, they will help identify any ownership (and possibly tax) issues with assets that may not or do not form part of an estate such as:

• Assets that are owned as joint tenants
• Life insurance proceeds (where someone else is the policy owner or nominated beneficiary)
• Superannuation death benefits that are paid to dependents and non-dependents
• Company assets
• Trust assets

In these cases, our planners will aim to ensure that these assets are transferred to the appropriate person, with minimal costs and at the right time.

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