Practice · 12
Wills, succession and estate planning
The people who build businesses tend to leave the last document unwritten. It is the one that decides what happens to all the others.
Estate planning for business owners and their families, and the application for probate when the time comes.
The work
Estate planning for a business owner is a commercial exercise. Who runs the company on Monday if you are not there. Whether your partner's family inherits half the business or a cheque. Whether the trust that holds the assets has a successor appointor. Whether your superannuation goes where you assume it does. A will on its own answers none of those.
The practice drafts the set: wills, including wills with testamentary trusts where they help, enduring powers of attorney, enduring guardianship appointments, superannuation nominations, and the buy-sell agreements and succession provisions that keep a business running through a death or incapacity. When someone has died, it prepares the probate or administration application and advises the executor on the job they have been given.
Wills and estate planning documents are fixed-fee work, quoted as a set or individually. Probate applications are quoted once the estate is known.
This work includes
- Wills
- Testamentary trusts
- Enduring powers of attorney
- Enduring guardianship appointments
- Superannuation death benefit nominations
- Business succession planning
- Buy-sell agreements between owners
- Company and trust succession
- Applications for probate and letters of administration
- Advice to executors
How it usually runs
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A conversation about what you have and who should get it
Family, business interests, property, superannuation, and the arrangements that already exist. Business owners in particular usually have assets in structures a simple will does not reach, and that is where the planning starts.
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The documents, as a set
A will, a power of attorney and a guardianship appointment are three different documents doing three different jobs, and most people need all three. For business owners there is often a buy-sell agreement and a succession plan for the company or trust alongside them.
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When someone has died
The practice prepares and lodges the application for probate or letters of administration with the Supreme Court of New South Wales, and advises the executor on what the role requires. Where the estate needs money to be collected and held by a lawyer, that part is referred to a practice with a trust account.
Where the line is
- The practice does not hold client money. Where an estate's administration requires a lawyer to receive and hold estate funds, that stage is referred to a practice with a trust account, and the referral is arranged before it becomes urgent.
- Contested estates, including family provision claims and challenges to a will, are court matters and go to a litigator on the panel.
Nobody pays anybody for a referral here, in either direction. How the practice hands work on →
Common questions
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I own a business. Is a standard will enough?
Usually not. A will deals with what you own personally. Shares in a company pass under it, but the business's assets, a family trust, and your superannuation each follow their own rules and their own documents. A business owner's estate plan is a will plus the arrangements that sit around it, and the will is often the simplest part.
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What is a buy-sell agreement?
An agreement between the owners of a business about what happens to an owner's share if they die or are permanently incapacitated: usually that the others buy it at an agreed value, often funded by insurance. Without one, the surviving owners can find themselves in business with a deceased partner's family, and the family can find themselves owning something they cannot sell.
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What is the difference between a power of attorney and a guardianship appointment?
A power of attorney lets someone make financial and legal decisions for you. An enduring guardianship appointment lets someone make decisions about your health, care and where you live. In New South Wales they are separate documents, and one does not cover the other. Most people need both, and they matter while you are alive, which a will does not.
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Do I need probate?
It depends on what the estate holds and who holds it. Banks, share registries and the land registry each have their own thresholds for releasing assets without a grant, and real property in the deceased's sole name almost always needs one. The practice will tell you whether a grant is needed before you pay for one.
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Make an enquiry
Send a short note about what is happening. You will hear back within one business day, and there is no charge for finding out whether the matter is a fit.