Private Advisory, Wills & Estates 

Expertise

• Complex estate planning for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals and families
• Wills incorporating testamentary trusts, protective trusts and tailored succession structures
• Estate planning for blended families and vulnerable beneficiaries
• Business succession and intergenerational wealth transfer
• Estate administration and complex probate applications
• Estate and trust disputes
• Family provision claims
• Disputes concerning will validity, testamentary capacity and undue influence
• Advice to executors and trustees, including disputes and removal applications
• Equitable claims affecting deceased estates, including estoppel, constructive trusts and informal wills
• Enduring powers of attorney and attorney disputes
• Guardianship and administration proceedings
• Superannuation death benefits and binding death benefit nominations
• Succession planning for self-managed superannuation funds
• Trust structuring, succession and control of family entities
• Charitable trusts, philanthropic structures and charitable giving
• Family constitutions, succession governance and facilitated family meetings
• Estate planning involving companies, trusts, partnerships and family businesses
• Tax considerations in estate planning, including capital gains tax, duty and superannuation death benefits
• Cross-disciplinary advice delivered with accountants, financial advisers, private bankers and other professional advisers

Experience

Recent transactions of note include: 

• Advising individuals, families, executors, trustees, beneficiaries and family offices on complex succession
• matters
• Designing and implementing tailored estate plans for clients with substantial personal, business, trust and
• superannuation interests
• Advising blended families on competing interests, asset protection and strategies to minimise the risk of
• future estate disputes
• Preparing sophisticated wills incorporating testamentary discretionary trusts, protective trusts and tailored
• control mechanisms
• Advising on succession to the control of private companies, family trusts, partnerships and self-managed
• superannuation funds
• Acting in contested estate proceedings, including family provision claims, will validity disputes and equitable
• claims
• Guiding executors and administrators through probate, estate administration, distributions, creditor claims
• and potential personal liability
• Acting in disputes involving the conduct, appointment and removal of executors, trustees and attorneys
• Advising on testamentary capacity, knowledge and approval, undue influence, suspicious circumstances and
• informal wills
• Advising on superannuation death benefit nominations and disputes over the payment of death benefits
• Collaborating with leading accountants, tax advisers, financial advisers, private bankers and counsel to
• deliver integrated succession solutions
• Leading and developing specialist Wills and Estates teams
• Supervising complex matters and providing strategic direction to lawyers and professional staff
• Developing precedents, procedures, workflows and risk-management frameworks
• Building trusted referral relationships across the legal, accounting, banking, trustee and financial advisory
• sectors
• Presenting seminars and technical sessions for clients, professional advisers and referral networks

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