Careful and considered estate planning ensures that you are prepared for the future. It sets out parameters for transferring the ownership and control of your hard-earned assets when the inevitable happens. Sophisticated and effective estate planning will ensure the assets and relationships you worked so hard to build during your life time are preserved for the future.
HopgoodGanim's Estate Planning and Administration practice provides realistic and comprehensive legal advice to help you establish the right estate planning documentation for the smooth transition of your assets.
Our estate specialists can work with you and your financial advisers to establish the initial estate planning strategy, but we also offer necessary dispute resolution services in the event that family disagreements over the division of assets arise.
Areas of Expertise
- Estate planning
o Wills and Memoranda of Directions
o Superannuation death benefit nominations
o Enduring and General Powers of Attorney
o Corporate, trust and superannuation investigations and reviews
- Estate administration
o Routine and non-routine
o Grants of Administration in common form
- Estate litigation
o Family provision applications
o Grants of Administration in solemn form
o Construction applications
o Applications for and against personal representatives
o QCAT applications
Our Experience
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Acting for a widow at mediation to negotiate a settlement of all claims in an estate dispute with the adult children of her husband from a previous marriage. This matter settled with a very favourable result for our client.
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Advising a client on the review and drafting of complex wills, taking into account family relationship issues, competing claims, complex corporate structures, a self-managed superannuation fund, and existing life insurance policies.
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Advising a client on asset and inheritance protection, which resulted in the establishment of testamentary discretionary trusts.
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Advising on and executing the estate of a man who died intestate and was a resident of the Northern Territory, but left assets in Queensland.
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Acting for the beneficiaries of a will in Supreme Court litigation to seek the removal of a solicitor executor/trustee, due to his failure to properly discharge his duties.
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Advising on the issues facing elderly clients in terms of accommodation, property, estate planning, wills, superannuation and pension arrangements.
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Advising HopgoodGanim's family law clients on the preparation of wills, where relationship issues and competing claims are paramount.
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Acting for a client to obtain a Grant of Administration from the Supreme Court of Queensland in favour of an interim/independent administrator, in circumstances where the executors named in the will had a conflict of interest.
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Advising a client on an application to the Guardianship and Administration Tribunal for the appointment of an administrator and guardian for his father, who was incapacitated.
