Estate Planning Lawyers
Estate Planning
Our Estate Planning Lawyers consider securing and protecting your assets paramount to benefit your loved ones in the event of your incapacity or death.
As you build your wealth or embark on a path of building your wealth, it is crucial to secure your assets in a way that ensures that you have sufficient funds for your retirement, and they are ultimately distributed among your loved ones as you have wished.
What is Estate Planning?
Estate planning involves managing your affairs, by tailoring them to your individual circumstances, so as to ensure that your family and loved ones are looked after in the event of your incapacity and/or death. There are various ways to do this, including:
Why is Estate Planning Important?
The importance of estate planning is reflected in the risks associated with failing to implement proper Estate Planning to protect your assets. These risks can include:
- Your assets not going to the people you wish to benefit
- Possible tax implications and a financial burden placed on your loves ones after you have passed
- Failing to properly plan your estate exposes your assets to be claimed by people you do not intend to benefit in that manner, if at all.
It is important to seek legal advice from an experienced Wills and Estate Planning Lawyer as early as possible. It is often the case that when people take it upon themselves to draft up an estate plan, they often make documents which later prove – for different reasons – to be invalid and therefore unenforceable. This can create a situation of chaos for those you leave behind, causing them potential of dishamony and costing them time and money to sort it all out.
How our Estate Planning Lawyers can help
Our Sydney Estate Planning Lawyers have extensive experience across all areas of Wills and Estates and can assist you with the following:
- Standard and complex Wills
- Powers of Attorney (enduring and general)
- Appointments of Enduring Guardian
- Advanced Care Directive
- Testamentary Trusts
- Superannuation advice including Self-Managed Superannuation Funds
- Business and company succession plans
- Family (discretionary) trusts and unit trusts
- Deeds of family arrangement
- Quarantining assets from the relationship property pool
- Administration of deceased estates
- Applications for grants of probate, letters of administration and resealing of foreign grants
- Acting for plaintiffs and defendants in contested family provision claims
- Testamentary capacity and undue influence
Questions to Consider when Estate Planning
To help you get started with your estate planning, consider the following:
- Who do you want to look after your estate? That is, who do you want to make the executor of your will, the person who will see to it that your wishes are carried out after your death?
- Who do you want to make gifts of your assets to? This will most likely be your surviving spouse and children, but obviously the situation becomes more complicated if you’ve remarried, have stepchildren, or have no immediate surviving family.
- How do you intend to pay any outstanding debts when you die? This needs to be factored into your estate plan so you don’t leave a debt burden to your loved ones.
- What would happen if you were badly injured or otherwise unable to make important decisions on your personal affairs?
- Who do you want to look after your financial and health decisions if you are unable to? This is where you appoint an Enduring Power of Attorney and/or Enduring Power of Guardianship, delegating someone you trust to make decisions for you if you’ve lost this capacity.
Getting Started with your Estate Planning
If you would like to arrange a free, no-obligation initial consultation to discuss your individual circumstances, contact our Wills & Estate Planning Lawyers on (02) 9262 4003 or submit an online enquiry.
You can also complete the following estate planning documents online through Ivy Law Group:
Simply complete the questions provided in the form and pay for your document using our secure payment platform. Our Wills & Estate Lawyers will then be in touch with you to discuss and finalise your document, reading for signing and execution. You can learn more about how it works on our Online Estate Planning information page.
