Wills and Estate Planning

What are the typical documents involved?

Will

Your Last Will and Testament is a document that operates once you die. In your Will typically there are 4 different types of people;

1. You are the Testator or Will maker
2. Executors – These are the People that you appoint to take control of your estate. Your executors call in your assets, pay out any bills owed by your estate. Your executors then finalise your estate administration by passing on the balance of your estate to your beneficiaries;
3. Beneficiaries – these are the people that will benefit from your estate. Executors and Beneficiaries can be the same people;
4. Guardians – These are the people that you appoint to look after any infant children.

Everyone has a different scenario, however a typical scenario of a marries Husband and Wife situation would be where:

Wife appoints Husband as Executor and leaves everything to him as sole Beneficiary. The Wife may then appoint here brother and her sister in law as default executors. She may then leave everything to the 3 children she has with her husband to be held on trust until the children turn 25 years old. She may also appoint her parents as Guardians for their children.

The Husband may then have a will that “mirrors” the Wife’s will.

BUT this is just an example – the reality is No one has a “normal” scenario and it is very common to have to cater for many different that involve;

• Defacto partners
• Children to previous relationships
• Same sex marriages
• Beneficiaries with difficult circumstances – Mental illness, addiction, financial problems
• Business relationship
• Different structures including companies, trusts
• Assets owned with other parties
• Life insurance
• Superannuation
• Specific gifts of particular assets
• Loans

And the list goes on…….

Enduring Power of Attorney

Your Enduring Power of Attorney is the document that operates while you are alive only. Once you die it ceases to be of effect and then your Will comes in to operation.

An Enduring Power of Attorney is where you appoint people you trust to make Legal, Financial and Health decisions for you.

You can appoint up to 4 attorneys. You can appoint different attorneys for different types of decisions.

You can also choose when you want your attorneys to make financial decisions for you. i.e. you may want or need to then to make financial decisions for you now or at a certain date in the future and not just when you lose capacity to make decisions for yourself.

Your attorney can only personal and health decision IF you lose the mental capacity to make decisions for yourself.

Advance Health Directive

This documents also operates whilst you are alive. It goes a step further than an Enduring Power of Attorney. In your Enduring Power of Attorney you appoint people to make decisions for you, in your Advance Health Directive, you give health directions now in advance of something happening to you in the future. It operates when you can not communicate and mostly when you are not going to survive. You complete the Advance Health Directive now with your Doctor. Your GP will explain the different medical scenarios and you can make particular choices. This document is then provided by your loved ones in the future to medical staff if you can not communicate.

Legal costs for Estate Planning

We typically meet with our clients for an initial no obligation meeting to discuss their particular estate planning needs. From this we are able to give our clients a quote for costs involved. Our clients can then choose what they want to do and whether they wish to engage us before it costs them anything.

Costs for estate planning (because of everyone’s different scenario) can vary from a several hundred dollars per person to several thousand depending on what is required.