Private Clients & Estate Planning

We take particular pride in our long term relationships with our valued clients and are proud to perform an important role in our clients’ decision making and planning processes relating to their business and personal legal matters.

We act for individuals, family groups and business owners of all types and sizes.  We understand the unique nature of private and family businesses and offer discreet and practical advice attuned to the specific requirements of our clients.

We provide bespoke services to our private clients across a wide spectrum of their commercial legal activities including corporate structuring, asset protection, estate planning and business succession planning.

We also work closely with other professional advisors such as accountants, bankers, financial planners and investment advisors in order to ensure our clients achieve the optimal outcomes in managing, protecting and transferring their wealth.

Our expertise and experience

Our private client specialists have extensive experience in the full range of legal issues impacting our clients including:

• Asset protection
• Estate planning and litigation, including wills & testamentary trusts, family trusts
• Business succession planning, including sale preparation, inter-generational transition and management buy-outs
• Corporate structuring, including management and co-ownership agreements
• Family and business disputes
• Family Law

Representative matters

• Estate planning and structuring advice and work conducted for a high net worth patriarch of a prominent commercial family operation that is conducted through a complex financial structure including a series of companies and family trusts.
• Advising and assisting the directors of a group of private companies to establish an effective succession regime for the group and its associated businesses.
• Advising a high net worth client in relation to testamentary trust and other structures in order to minimise succession and asset protection risks in the context of a vulnerable beneficiary.
• The provision of structuring advice to allow our clients to make tax effective distributions through a testamentary trust structure in respect of their specific superannuation entitlements.
• Advising a client in relation to an amendment to the vesting date of their family trust and an application under Section 81 of the Trustee Act 1925 NSW.
• Estate planning and financial structuring advice provided to the beneficiaries of a substantial lottery win.  Our advice enabled our clients to better structure their affairs for tax planning, succession and asset protection purposes.