Latest Developments in Multi-Generational Estate Planning – a recorded lunchtime online conference

Duration: Approximately 2.5 Hours

Hear from the experts at this online conference. You can watch it on your computer or on your portable electronic device from anywhere.

The conference will be based on our highly successful video webinar technology: there'll be a chairperson and presentations.

One registration can be shared by colleagues within the same firm utilising the same login.

THE PROGRAM

Session 1: Establishing Multi-Generational Business Structures in the Estate Plan

As Australia’s population gets older, there is an increasing trend towards older generations maintaining an interest in the family business as a way to continue deriving income for retirement. This session considers the consequences of a family business that is supporting 3 or 4 generations of a family and the control and conflict issues that arise for clients and estate planners as a result, including:

• Who is the business accountable to? Managing decision-making and control across the generations
• Inter-generational conflicts of interest in relation to the older generation’s need for income versus the younger generation’s desire for capital growth and access to capital
• Are the demands on the business reasonable? Can the pie be grown?
• Splitting out resources for effective operation of the business from resources for managing family shareholder relations
• Setting up formal governance programs and agreements on where decisions sit

Session 2: Family Trusts: Estate Planning for the Second Generation

When it comes to passing control of discretionary trusts to members of the second generation, careful planning is needed to ensure maximum taxation advantage. This session covers the essentials, including:

• Managing control of family trusts – the legal mechanisms
• Changing control of trusts
• Passing control to the next generation:
  • Determining the objective of the transfer:
    • To one child/family group
    • To some children
    • To all children
  • Minimising disputes between members – use of family agreements and shareholder agreements
  • Mechanisms for dividing trust assets among siblings – trust splitting and other options
  • Minimising the tax implications
  • Can Div 152 be used to obtain a cost base uplift?
• Lessons from case law, including Mercanti
• Case study: blended families, estate planning for the next generation and the family trust

Session 3: Tax Efficient Use of Super Proceeds Trusts and Testamentary Trusts for Super

As a result of the transfer balance cap, some clients may need to direct all or part of their death benefits (which would otherwise have been paid as a pension) to their estate and perhaps to a super proceeds trust. It is vital estate planners understand when a SPT is appropriate and how the concessional tax treatment applies. This session looks at:

• How do SPTs work?
• How are they established?
• Who is a death benefit dependant and why is it important?
• SPT and income beneficiaries
• Can you establish a SPT after death?
• Capital requirements
• What are the key advantages of a SPT? Tax efficiency, flexibility and asset protection?
• SPTs v child pensions