Estate planning is the plan that you create for your estate (your assets and belongings), which will become relevant once you pass away. The process involves the careful review and rearrangement (if required) of your asset structures to ensure that your belongings are in the correct legal form to be able to:
- be considered part of your estate; and
- be gifted to the people you want.
Usually, whether you need estate planning or not will come to light during the drafting of your will. It will depend on the current structure of your assets and your particular instructions are about what you want to happen to those assets after you pass away.
Did you know that superannuation does not automatically form part of your estate in order to be distributed by the will? Estate planning is needed to make superannuation a part of a person’s estate and it must be done during that person’s lifetime. Another example is that jointly owned real estate does not automatically become a part of a person’s estate. Competent estate planning should also help structure assets towards available tax advantages that the estate may be able to benefit from.
Although not everyone is going to require estate planning (depending on their assets and circumstances), everyone should have a legally valid will at the very least. Effectively, a legally valid will provides legally-binding instructions on how your assets will be distributed (amongst other things) and estate planning ensures that these assets are capable of being distributed in that way. If you want to read more about the importance of having a will, please click here.
It is our duty is to make sure that our clients are well-informed of their options, and during the process of drafting your will, we discuss whether you may need estate planning and why.
Please contact us on (02) 8006 1596 for a free chat and let our team inform and guide you through all of your options.