What is an Estate Plan?
Estate planning is the process of carefully arranging your legal and financial affairs to ensure that your assets are protected and distributed to your intended beneficiaries in accordance with your wishes, in an orderly and tax-effective manner.
A carefully prepared estate plan brings together your legal and financial affairs to protect your assets and ensure that your wishes are clearly understood and effectively carried out.
Estate Planning
We are passionate about estate planning. We understand the importance of ensuring our clients have the right documents in place to deal with their assets in the event of their death. Estate planning, however is so much more than just preparing a will. It involves thinking about who will pay your bills and manage your assets and finances if you are incapacitated and who will make health and medical decisions on your behalf if you are not able to do so. When it comes to estate planning, there is no ‘once size fits all’ and it is important that the person’s individual needs and circumstances are taken into consideration.
Who will look after your minor children if you and the other parent die? If you are the sole director of a private company, what will happen if you are in an accident and cannot make important decisions regarding your company or business? Who will be appointed to look after your family trust or self-managed super fund? These are questions that we consider on a daily basis and can assist with forward planning to give you peace of mind and certainty.
Peter Tanswell is an experienced Wills and Estates solicitor and will personally look after your estate planning matters and can personally assist with:
- Wills
- Enduring Powers of Attorney
- Appointment of Enduring Guardians
- Advance Care Directives
- the consideration of companies, trusts, self-managed superannuation funds and jointly held property in the context of your estate plan
A Complete Approach to Estate Planning
Your Will, Power of Attorney and Appointment of Enduring Guardian perform different functions.
Together, however, they can form important components of your overall estate plan.
Your Will primarily deals with what happens to your estate after your death.
Your Enduring Power of Attorney allows a trusted person to deal with financial and legal matters on your behalf during your lifetime in accordance with the authority granted.
Your Enduring Guardian can make authorised personal, health and lifestyle decisions if you lose decision-making capacity.
Considering these documents together can help create a more comprehensive plan for both your lifetime and the administration of your estate following your death.
Estate Planning
We provide estate planning services for clients.
Whether you are preparing your first Will, updating an existing Will or considering a broader estate plan, we can assist you in identifying the legal documents and arrangements appropriate for your circumstances.
Our estate planning services include:
- Wills;
- Estate planning;
- Will reviews and updates;
- Power of Attorney;
- Appointment of Enduring Guardian;
- Testamentary Trust Wills
- Superannuation and estate planning considerations;
- Planning for vulnerable beneficiaries; and
- Reviewing existing estate planning arrangements.