Couples Tax Effective Estate Planning Bundle

Start building for free: protect your family from death taxes, divorce and bankruptcy

Press the above START BUILDING FOR FREE. Answer the questions one page at a time. On each page, the hints and training videos educate and empower you. Press Next to save your answers.

At LOCK AND BUILD, you are welcome to telephone Legal Consolidated to discuss your answers with a lawyer.

What is included in the Couples Estate Planning Bundle?

The Couples Tax-Effective Estate Planning Bundle includes:

1. mirror Wills each containing tax-effective 3-Generation Testamentary Trusts;
2. two Enduring Powers of Attorney; and
3. two Medical, Lifestyle and Guardianship Powers of Attorney.

The Wills protect your family when you die. The Powers of Attorney protect you while you are alive.

1. Mirror Wills: contain tax-effective 3-Generation Testamentary Trusts

The two Mirror Wills leave everything to each other. After both of you die, everything goes to your beneficiaries. (If you are single, build the Single Bundle.)

Professor Brett Davies developed Legal Consolidated’s 3-Generation Testamentary Trust in 1997. Your beneficiaries use the flexibility in the Wills to protect themselves from:

1. de facto death duties of CGT, income tax and stamp duty;
2. 32% tax on superannuation paid to adult children with Superannuation Testamentary Trusts;
3. bankruptcy with Bankruptcy Trusts;
4. divorce with Divorce Protection Trusts; and
5. being under 18, vulnerable or receiving Centrelink.

The trusts are flexible. A beneficiary can use the trust, leave it dormant, or turn it off when it is no longer required. Each beneficiary receives their own 3-Generation Testamentary Trust to use when needed.

The Wills provide freedom to divide the assets. Say your estate has $1 million in shares, $1 million in property and $1 million in cash. One child can take the shares. Another can take the property. The remaining child can take the cash. This stops an artificial split of every asset and helps reduce unnecessary CGT and stamp duty.

2. Enduring Power of Attorney: protect your money while you are alive

 

Your Will works when you die. Your Enduring Power of Attorney works while you are alive.

An Enduring Power of Attorney allows you to appoint people to make financial decisions for you if you cannot make those decisions yourself. It covers your assets, bank accounts, real estate, and other financial affairs.

Without an Enduring Power of Attorney, your family has to deal with the government. Your spouse can hold your Enduring Power of Attorney in the first instance. You can then appoint backups.

Legal Consolidated is a national Australian law firm. Your Enduring Power of Attorney is prepared for your individual State or Territory. 

3. Medical and Lifestyle POA: protect your body while you are alive

Your Enduring POA protects your money, property and wealth. Your Medical and Lifestyle Power of Guardianship protects your body.

Who looks after you when you cannot speak for yourself? The government? The retirement home? The doctors? Or the people you love and trust?

A Medical and Lifestyle POA allows you to appoint people to make personal, lifestyle and medical decisions if you lose mental capacity. This is not just about the last day of your life. It includes decisions about where you live, who cares for you and what medical treatment you receive.

Wife trapped in aged care

A client telephoned Legal Consolidated. His wife had Alzheimer’s disease and was in a high-end aged care facility. He wanted to move her, but the home said he had no authority to touch or move her. Not even as her husband. Our Wills and POAs come with free advice. We helped him use his wife’s Medical Treatment Decision Maker to get her out of that facility.

Escape a bad hospital

Another client’s wife was in hospital. The doctors were, in his words, ‘behaving like Gods, not doctors’. We helped him use the Power of Guardianship. He moved her to another hospital. The doctors could not stop him.

Medical and Lifestyle POAs in each State and Territory

Legal Consolidated builds the Medical and Lifestyle POA for your State or Territory:

• Appointment of Enduring Guardian — NSW, WA and Tasmania
• Medical Treatment Decision Maker — Victoria
• Enduring Power of Attorney — Queensland and ACT
• Advance Care Directive — South Australia
• Advance Personal Plan — Northern Territory

The name changes. The purpose is the same. You choose who speaks for you when you cannot.

Update your Wills and POAs for free

You can update your Wills and POAs for free. As often as you wish.

Free legal advice — during life and after death

The cost of your Legal Consolidated Wills and POAs includes free legal advice.

While you are alive, you, your adviser and your accountant can telephone Legal Consolidated with questions.

When you die or lose mental capacity, the people you appoint and their advisers can telephone us for free legal advice.

Free storage and monitoring of your signed Wills

Your original signed Will is valuable. Keep it safe, and let your Executors know where it is stored. (You may wish to email them a copy of your Will.)

You can store a signed Will at home, at the bank or with the Executors.

Alternatively, you can store your signed Wills at no cost with a law firm specialising in Will storage and death notice monitoring.

 

Further issues discussed during the free building process

Death Taxes

• Australia’s four death duties
• 32% tax on superannuation to children
• Selling a dead person’s home tax-free
• CGT on dead wife’s wedding ring

Protecting Beneficiaries

• Divorce Protection Trust
• Bankruptcy Trusts
• Guardians for under 18-year-old children
• Will challenges

Assets not in your Will

• Joint tenancy assets and the family home
• Loans to children, parents or company 
• Who controls my Company at death?