Swaab Attorneys

Our estate planning lawyers are determined to help you find the best position in all of life’s complexities.

We’re ardent advocates of estate planning as a way of building wealth during your working life, having sufficient funds for a comfortable retirement and ensuring that your assets are ultimately distributed exactly as you wish to your family members and other beneficiaries.

We will do our utmost to help you see estate planning not as a tedious chore, but as a positive step to take control of your financial affairs.

We’re convinced that no-one really wants to pay more tax than they need to, or to have their family subjected to delays or disputes over the distribution of their estate.

Whether your estate planning needs are simple or complex, we can help.

Our expertise in estate planning

• Simple and complex wills
• Powers of attorney
• Appointment of enduring guardian
• Advance care directives (living wills)
• Testamentary trusts
• Capital protected trusts
• Superannuation advice including self-managed superannuation funds
• Advising on applications to the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal
• Business succession plans
• Family constitutions
• Protecting the wealth of high net worth clients
• Estate planning for de facto and same sex couples
• Drafting and advising on special disability trusts
• Trusts and life estates including remaindermen entitlements
• Drafting and negotiating deeds of family arrangement
• Gifts and charitable foundations
• Sensitive matters like the unequal distribution of assets in blended families
• Quarantining assets from the relationship property pool

Our expertise in estate administration

• Administration of deceased estates
• Bankrupt estates
• International wills and estates
• Rectifying and contesting wills
• Applications for grants of probate, letters of administration and resealing of foreign grants
• Advising on applications for statutory wills
• Acting for plaintiffs and defendants in contested family provision claims
• Advising, initiating claims and appearing in cases of testamentary capacity and undue influence
• Informal wills
• Guardianship Tribunal work and protected estates, including claims for commission, assisting and advising on the filing of accounts
• Advising on the transition from executor to trustee and advising on long term trust estates
• Advising on matters relating to breach of fiduciary duty in relation to powers of attorney
• Representing estates of both significant and modest value
• Advising charitable institutions with regard to their legacies, balancing competing beneficial and family provision claims

Estate planning

Everyone’s situation is different, so we know that estate planning needs to be tailored to your individual circumstances.

Perhaps your goal is to ensure that your estate plan maximises your access to government benefits. Or your top priority may be to create structures to protect disabled or vulnerable family members.

Maybe you’re anxious to ensure that your assets are passed down as you intend to your own children and grandchildren, rather than being distributed to people with a competing interest, like ex-partners and stepchildren.
You might have a need to quarantine particular assets from the relationship property pool. Or maybe you simply want to make sure that you and your family don’t pay any more tax than you have to.

Whatever your estate planning needs, we can offer you technical excellence and up-to-date knowledge in an area of law that is constantly evolving.

We have over 30 years of experience helping people protect their assets. This has made us very good at reducing loopholes which could otherwise be exploited by others to the detriment of your beneficiaries.

Estate Litigation

We firmly believe that litigation is the last resort, not the first option. Unfortunately, sometimes litigation can be unavoidable.

As a multi-disciplinary law firm, we can offer you a big advantage if you ever need our help with an estate litigation matter.

We understand the interrelation between estate litigation and other areas of law which could have a bearing on your case, including family law, property law, business law, commercial law and insolvency. The fact that we have great people working in all these areas means that we can quickly involve other experts in your case if we need to.