What happens in your Will if a child dies before you?

If a child dies before me, who gets their interest in my Will? There are three great uncertainties in building your Will: 1. You do not know the date of your death. 2. You do not know what assets you own. 3. We do not know what the law is, as laws change all the time....

A POA and POG only work in their home state

Why You Need a Power of Attorney in Every State You Own Assets Sun Tzu in The Art of War tells us that warfare is based on deception. Australian state governments play the exact same game. Australia consists of eight proud, separate jurisdictions. They have their own...

Homemade Will evicts son from family home: a $100,000 tragedy

The homemade Will in Re Negrean; Borbil v Borbil Mrs Raveica Negrean loved her son, John. She wanted him to be safe and live in her home when she died. So, the mother wrote in her homemade Will: “[To] my son John Negrean (Ioan Borbil) principal place of...

The End of the Handshake: Why the Merger Game Just Changed

In the high-stakes world of corporate finance, we often get lost in the takeover jargon. We talk about “synergies” and “accretive value.” But for the average Australian, what does this actually mean? To start from ground zero: a merger is...