Your estate is in good hands with our estate planning lawyers
Providing clarity after you’re gone
Estate planning is about much more than just sorting out your affairs – it’s about ensuring that you continue to control your finances, assets and wealth, even after your passing. Think of it as an extension of your financial planning.
And like financial planning, it’s important that you choose a professional to help you out.
Our estate planning lawyers in Melbourne don’t just tell you what you can and can’t do when it comes to your estate – we’ll also work with you to devise a solution that you’re completely happy with, and which aligns with your goals, whatever they may be.
Do you aim to:
- … provide your family financial security going forward?
- … resolve outstanding debts, offering your relatives a clean slate?
- … set your business or company on a certain path?
Whatever the end goal is, tell us, and our team of estate planning lawyers will ensure that your estate plan helps you achieve these goals.
Estate Planning is not just about making a Will or arranging Powers of Attorney
If you ask us, it should be about helping you attain a specific goal regarding your estate.
It could be planning your financial future. It could be attaining peace of mind. It could be about reducing risk to your family.
Whatever it is, good estate planning is key.
At Danaher Legal, we believe the old adage is true that a “stitch in time will save nine”. Put simply, an estate plan is money well-spent that will save you money in the future and give you peace of mind. The cost when something goes wrong can be significant, both financially and emotionally.
An effective Estate Plan will require:
- Wills for you and your partner
- Powers of Attorney (Medical Treatment and Financial)
- For those of advanced age, An Advanced Medical Care Directive
- Superannuation nominations (superannuation sits outside your Wills)
- Review and advice on control of structures like companies, trusts, Self Managed Superannuation Funds
- Strategies and solutions to deal with complicating factors such as blended families, same sex relationships, leaving people out of Wills, protection of beneficiaries, family law matters.
Leave behind confidence
Taking care of your affairs
Estate planning is about more than just writing a Will and naming your beneficiaries.
It’s about ensuring that everything you leave behind is taken care of, from savings, to investments, to any unpaid debts you may have, as well as how your Will is to be carried out.
As estate planning specialists, Danaher Moulton can help you take care of your affairs. We will settle things on your behalf, protecting your loved ones from uncertainty during what’s an extremely stressful time.
Trusts
Trusts are an essential part of estate planning.
In addition to allowing you to distribute your assets and manage your estate, a properly set-up trust can also reduce taxes and open the door to a range of other benefits.
Leave your family better off – our estate planning lawyers in Melbourne can set up and manage a trust on your behalf, managing your affairs after you’re gone.
Non-estate assets
Not all of your assets will be included in your estate for legal reasons.
Non-estate assets refer to assets that you hold control over, but which are not in your name such as superannuation, assets held in trusts and jointly-owned assets.
Different types of non-estate assets are treated differently. Our estate planning experts will help you understand what will happen to these assets, and how they factor into your estate planning.
Power of Attorney
Estate planning isn’t just about death – it can also provide guidance for your family in the event that you are incapacitated or disabled.
Who will look after your bills, debts and medical care in these cases?
Granting power of attorney to one of our Hawthorn lawyers can save considerable heartache and stress, while also ensuring that everything is still handled according to your wishes.
The right Estate Plan to protect your family wealth
What type of Estate Plan you need depends not on what your assets are, but on what you want to do with them after you have passed away.
For example – if your main asset is your home and you want to leave it to your children, but exclude one child or protect one child. In these cases, your Will has a complicating factor.
In short there are 3 types of Estate Plans…
The risk in having the wrong Estate Plan?
If you choose a Will based on price alone, you’re likely to end up with the wrong Will – something that could end up costing you or your beneficiaries a lot of money.
We have seen clients:
- Have a $30,000 Will when what they needed was a basic Will
- Have a Will kit Will when they needed a comprehensive, tailored Will
- Opt for a basic estate plan that overlooked complicating factors
The trick is to understand what type of Will you need and why. If you choose a basic Will when you need a Will that deals with complicating factors, it will end up causing you (or your beneficiaries) significant cost with lawyers, stress and loss of time.
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What type of Wills do our lawyers in Melbourne do?
- Simple Wills
- Blended, defacto and same sex family
- Ultra high net worth (up to $100m in net worth)
- Complex estate planning involving trusts, companies, superannuation and SMSF
- Strategies to protect estates from claims (unchallengeable Wills)
- Protective estate planning (Special Disability Trusts, testamentary trusts)
- Advanced estate planning (control of trusts, SMSF’s, family businesses)
- Powers of Attorney and Appointments of Medical Treatment Decision Maker
What type of Business Succession Planning do we do?
- Shareholder/unitholder/partnership/joint venture agreements
- Insurance-funded buy/sell agreements
- Business buyout agreements – share sale/unit sale/buy backs/business sale agreements
What type of Wills do our lawyers in Melbourne do?
A Will is a good start – in many cases however, you may need to go even further
Think of your estate plan as your WIll, except taken even further.
Estate planning is the more comprehensive cousin to your Will. This comes with a number of benefits for both you and your family.
They are also considerably more complex – luckily, our estate planning lawyers can help with that!
Estate planning lawyers in Hawthorn
When it comes to your estate, it’s important that you choose a lawyer that gets you
It isn’t enough that they understand how inheritance law works – they should also understand what makes you tick and what matters to you.
That means going beyond asking you where you want your money and assets to go – we will also ask you about your family dynamic, what each family member would prefer to inherit as well as your values.
That’s because your estate isn’t just about pragmatism and financial security.
In addition to your wealth and assets, your estate plan may also go over the distribution of items with immense sentimental value. A good plan should also seek an arrangement that minimises family drama.
This requires an estate planning lawyer in Melbourne that looks beyond the numbers.
Not everyone gets it. But we do.
7 steps to achieving
your goals
Engaging a lawyer doesn’t have to be a long-winded process
We know that when it comes to your case, one size does not fit all. That’s why we don’t bother trying to find one at all.
Instead, each case we take on starts with an in-depth process that gets to the heart of your issue, as well as the solution you want.
Only then can we work towards getting you the solution you want.
