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Private Clients
We are a leading wills, estates and succession planning, and wills and estates litigation firm ranked in Chambers Asia Pacific 2019 for private wealth law.
Our Private Clients team are praised for their “responsiveness, technical competence and client-centric values” and “the depth of their knowledge and the manner in which they explain what can be a complicated area to clients” – Chambers Asia Pacific 2019.
We advise private clients, including business owners, high net worth individuals and families. We are mindful of the often emotional nature of dealing with a client’s personal affairs and are skilled at navigating all relevant issues with sensitivity to achieve the desired and appropriate outcomes.
Our team’s extensive experience includes:
- preparing or updating estate and succession planning documents, including wills with testamentary trusts, letters of wishes and documents to deal with incapacity to allow trusted persons to make medical, lifestyle and financial decisions if the client is unable to make such decisions
- advising on trusts, including establishing trusts, continuing administration, dealing with succession of control of trusts, managing special disability trusts, undertaking trust deed reviews, and advising on trust interpretation and trust disputes
- preparing business succession planning, including by way of sale and inter-generational transfer, buy sell agreements and shareholder/unitholder agreements
- administering estates (probate and letters of administration)
- resolving private client disputes, including trust disputes and claims for further provision to be made out of the estate of a deceased person
- advising on asset protection structuring to minimise the exposure of assets to creditors and the Family Court
- advising on charity and philanthropy, including establishing and administering charitable trusts and foundations
- advising on superannuation and taxation, and
- advising on migration and international wealth.
Key contacts
William Moore
Partner
With over ten years' of experience, William helps clients to work through their succession planning goals and issues. He...
Emma Woolley
Partner
Emma has extensive experience in advising clients in estate planning and estate administration, trust establishment, and ongoing administration, trust...
James Whiley
Partner
James specialises in estate and succession planning for ultra-high and high net worth clients. He also has experience in...
Our team
Related thinking
Private Clients| 07 Dec 2020
Changes to powers of attorney and advance health directives: Queensland
Changes to Queensland’s guardianship laws are now in force. The amendments, which came into effect on 30 November 2020, relate to the Guardianship and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2019 (Qld).
Private Clients| 19 Nov 2020
Trusts and the foreign person duty and land tax surcharge: act before it’s too late!
As 2020 nears to a close, advisors should note the impending 31 December deadline in NSW to exclude foreign persons as beneficiaries of discretionary trusts, to prevent these trusts from becoming foreign persons for the purposes of surcharge duty and land tax.
Private Clients| 22 Oct 2020
Keeping it in the family: asset protection, succession planning and bankruptcy
Bankruptcy concerns are becoming very real for many clients in the succession planning space. Fortunately, there are strategies you can put in place to limit the exposure of your assets to creditors both during your lifetime and on your death.
Private Clients| 15 Sep 2020
Do you have a client who is a member of the Bank of Mum and Dad?
We have had many recent enquiries where Mum and Dad have been asked to act as guarantors for a loan. We highlight the potential asset protection benefits of your clients formally loaning, as opposed to gifting, money to their family members.