Estate Planning

Estate Planning

Estate planning is a way of ensuring that the assets you own and wealth you have built is passed onto your beneficiaries in the most financially efficient and tax effective way possible. This is essential to protect your assets and your family.

Don’t put your family at risk, protect your loved ones.

What Is an Estate?

An estate is everything comprising the net worth of an individual, including all land and real estate, possessions, financial securities, cash, and other assets that the individual owns or has a controlling interest in.

What assets fall outside the estate?

Not all assets form part of the estate. Any property owned as joint tenants will automatically pass to the survivor. This may include real property, joint bank accounts and joint shares.

Superannuation may also fall outside the estate. If the deceased has made a valid binding nomination, then the superannuation fund will pay the superannuation to the person nominated and bypass the estate.

Similarly to superannuation, if the deceased had nominated a beneficiary of any life insurance policy, then any payment would be made directly to the nominated beneficiary and not form part of the estate.

Planning your financial future doesn’t end with super.

A good estate plan can:

• ensure the ownership and control of your assets passes to your intended beneficiaries and in the right proportions
• minimise the tax impact on your estate and beneficiaries
• ensure your estate is administered in a cost-efficient and timely manner
• protect assets if a beneficiary is involved in any legal difficulties (e.g. bankruptcy or divorce) or under a legal disability.

Once you’ve created an estate plan, you should continue to review it on a regular basis, particularly when an important life event occurs:

• getting divorced
• the birth of a child
• the death of a relative you’ve provided for
• starting work
• changing jobs
• retiring

Want to talk estate planning? Contact us here.