Estate Planning for Blended Families - recorded half-day online conference

You can put your staff in the boardroom and watch it there. You can watch it on your computer or on your portable electronic device. All for the same low price.

The conference will be based on our highly successful video webinar technology: there’ll be a chairperson, a panel of experts, presentations and discussion.

Session 1: Mutual Wills in Blended Families: Protecting Assets or Creating Strife?

Mutual wills are an increasingly common estate planning tool for blended families. This session examines the benefits of using mutual wills, as well as the challenges mutual wills can create. It covers:

• What makes a will a mutual will?

• Advantages and disadvantages of mutual wills in blended families

• Key tips and traps for solicitors in drafting mutual wills for clients in blended families

• Property settlements, relationship breakdown, divorce and mutual wills

• Enforcement issues – Can a surviving spouse avoid a mutual will?

• Options available if there is a breach of mutual will obligations

• Case studies

Session 2: Blended Families, Family Trusts and the Bullet Proof Estate Plan

Family trusts can be a useful generational planning tool, particularly when they involve blended families. This session examines how family trusts can be used to keep both the surviving spouse and adult children happy with the estate plan. It covers:

• Use of life interests and rights of residency in the family trust to the surviving spouse

• Who bears the costs of the property? Tenant or the family trust?

• Creating income streams via trust resolutions versus creation of life interests

• Life interests and the CGT consequences

• Succession planning options for discretionary family trusts in a blended family

Session 3: Super Death Benefits and Blended Families: Preparing Watertight Death Benefit Nominations

Death benefit nominations can be an effective way of ensuring your super is distributed in accordance with your intentions. This is especially the case if you have multiple beneficiaries (such as from previous marriages) who may have a claim on your death benefit. However, when should you use a BDBN or non-lapsing nomination, and how can you make them bullet-proof? When might they be inappropriate? This session covers:

• Drafting of BDBNs – cascading clauses and tips to achieve certainty – what will industry funds allow you to do with cascading nominations?

• Common reasons why BDBNs fail

• The power of the fund trustee to distribute death benefits in the absence of binding nominations

• Position of the trustee if there is a dispute over the validity of the BDBN

• Reversionary pension as an alternative to the BDBN:

  • what happens upon the death of the recipient of the pension if it is a second spouse?

  • can you protect the children from the first marriage?

  • does the capital form part of the second spouse’s estate?

• Recourse against the trustee

• What is a non-lapsing nomination and when are they available? Do they really work?

• What are the risks of relying on a non-lapsing nomination? Does the trustee have any discretion?