The clock is ticking: why your estate plan could be undermined by forgotten loans
If you’ve loaned money to a child, a family trust, or to entities within your personal investment or business structure, you might assume those debts will be honoured, or at least recognised, when you pass away. However, unless steps are taken to formally record and maintain those loan arrangements, your executor may discover too late that the loans are no longer legally enforceable. This article explains how the six-year limitation […]
Structuring advice for your PAF, charity or NFP
Structuring advice for your PAF, charity or NFP Choose the right structure for your giving before you commit to it. Structured giving starts with a decision that is hard to undo: which vehicle holds the money. A Private Ancillary Fund, a registered charity and a not-for-profit are governed differently, taxed differently, and hand control to […]
Set up a legal entity for your PAF, charity or NFP
Set up a legal entity for your PAF, charity or NFP Get the entity right so your cause can outlive the person who started it. Which entity should hold your charitable work? A charitable trust, an incorporated association and a company limited by guarantee are all used for the same causes, and they hand control, […]
Register and licence your PAF, charity or NFP
Register and licence your PAF, charity or NFP Get registered so donors are backing an institution, not just you. Until the registrations are through, your organisation is an intention rather than an institution. Donors can’t claim a deduction, grant bodies won’t consider you, and the ATO can look back at the structure later. We prepare […]
Run, manage and administer your PAF, charity or NFP
Run, manage and administer your PAF, charity or NFP Keep the obligations handled so the organisation stays about the cause. An organisation that is registered has to stay registered. That means an annual statement to the charity regulator, distribution obligations if you are a Private Ancillary Fund, governance standards the board has to actually meet, […]
Protect your estate from potential claims
Protect your estate from potential claims We structure the estate now so the choices you made are the ones that survive you. You have decided who should benefit from what you built, and you have probably decided who should not. Family provision legislation lets certain people ask a court to change that, and the bar […]
Obtain a grant of probate
Obtain a grant of probate We prepare and run the probate application, so the court gives you the authority you were already trusted with. Being named executor is meant to be a mark of trust. Then you try to act on it, and every institution asks the same question before it will talk to you: […]
Protect a family loan from third parties
Protect a family loan from third parties We document the money as a secured loan, so a separation or a creditor cannot take it. You are helping one of your children into a house or a business, and you are not worried about them. You are worried about everyone else: the partner who may not […]
Business succession planning
Business succession planning We move control to the next generation while you are still here to steer it. You have built something worth handing on, and the people who would take it are ready, or nearly. What makes this hard is rarely the law. It is that you are deciding who runs the thing you […]
Incapacity planning
Incapacity planning We put the authority in the hands of someone you chose, before anyone needs to use it. You make decisions today that other people depend on. An accident, an illness or simply age can end that on any given morning, and the moment it does your family needs authority they will not have. […]