Complex families and/or estate structures or family business groups, require the application of sophisticated estate tools to ensure your wishes are able to be carried out.  Some of the estate planning tools we have available for our clients:

 

• Flexible & portable rights of occupation:  These allow a beneficiary, often a spouse, to live in your house for their life or until a defined termination even occurs but preserving the home ultimately for other beneficiaries, often the will-maker’s children.  The exact terms depend upon what you would like, but can include that the home can be used to fund entry into aged care provided that it is only a loan, and the money must be fully or repaid later.

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• Equalisation clauses: These allow you, the will-maker to ensure that assets that your children receive from outside your estate, for example from your superannuation or form your family trust, are accounted for when determining what their ‘equal share’ of your estate is.

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• Testamentary trusts: See our page on testamentary trusts here.

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• Contractual wills: These powerful arrangements allow for spouses to promise to each other that they will never change their wills, even after the death of the other.  For example, you may make a will giving your family home to your spouse, with your spouse promising in their will to leave that home to your children and their children equally.  On the death of both of you, even if decades have passed, your spouse will have a legal obligation to comply with their promise.  Contractual wills, prepared properly, are legally binding and will be enforced by the Supreme Court.   However contractual wills are inflexible and generally don’t allow families to take account of changing life circumstances.

 

But most critical is tailored estate planning.  At Moin Morris Schaefer, we do not provide “cookie cutter” wills.  Our approach is that every person and their family is unique and must be treated individually with regard to their particular circumstances.  This tailored approach to estate planning ensures that you will receive an estate plan which works for you and your family.