The decision to grant another person authority over your financial affairs is not one to be taken lightly. Yet it is a decision that every adult should address, because the alternative — having no plan in place if you lose capacity — can be far more disruptive, far more expensive, and far harder on your family than any act of foresight could be.
None of us likes to contemplate a time when we may be unable to communicate our own wishes about medical treatment. Yet illness, accident, or the gradual decline that can accompany old age may leave us in precisely that position. An Advance Care Directive (ACD) is South Australia’s legal mechanism for ensuring that your voice is heard even when you cannot speak — and it is one of the most important documents an adult can have in place.
For many Australians, superannuation is the largest single asset they will accumulate over a working lifetime. Yet despite its size, superannuation is also one of the most misunderstood assets from an estate planning perspective. The critical point — one that surprises many clients — is that your superannuation does not automatically pass according to your Will.
Among the more distressing phenomena encountered in succession law practice is the marriage of convenience — sometimes called a predatory marriage — in which a person cultivates a relationship with an older or cognitively vulnerable individual for the purpose of securing an inheritance. The legal consequences for the victim’s family can be severe, and South Australian law has only recently moved to address them.
When most people think about estate planning, they think about property, bank accounts, superannuation, and personal possessions. Few think about their email inbox, their cryptocurrency wallet, their Netflix subscription, or the thirty thousand photographs stored on a cloud service. Yet for many Australians in 2026, the digital estate is substantial — and it is almost entirely unplanned for.
For a business owner, the question ‘what happens to my estate when I die?’ is inseparable from the question ‘what happens to my business?’ The death of a business owner without a succession plan can destroy value that has been built over decades, trigger crippling disputes among partners or shareholders, leave employees without direction, and saddle the surviving family with an asset they cannot manage, cannot sell, and cannot afford to run.
Business succession planning is the process of ensuring that your business has a clear, documented path forward in the event of your death or incapacity — and that your estate plan is properly integrated with that path.
Australia’s rates of relationship breakdown and re-partnering mean that blended family structures — where one or both partners bring children from a prior relationship into a new household — are now a common feature of Australian life. Estate planning in a blended family is one of the most complex and emotionally charged challenges in succession…
Western Australian Supreme Court Master Craig Sanderson has publically stated in a 2014 judgment that “Homemade Wills are a curse,” and inevitably lead to protracted and expensive legal battles in family disputes involving substantial estates.
Master Sanderson said the legal issue around the proper determination of the deceased’s Will could have been avoided if he had “consulted a lawyer and signed off on a Will that reflected his wishes”.
Master Sanderson warned of the dangers of homemade Wills, saying there was no question that engaging a properly qualified and experienced lawyer to draft a Will was “money well spent”.
“But where, as here, the estate of the deceased is substantial, the Will is opaque and there is no agreement among the beneficiaries, the inevitable result is an expensive legal battle which is unlikely to satisfy everyone.”
This view is supported by Rod Genders, who is a senior Australian lawyer specialising in trusts, Wills and estate planning, accident compensation, probate and deceased estate administration in Adelaide and throughout South Australia. His boutique specialist law firm, which was founded on 1848, is one of the oldest and most respected in Australia.
Baby Boomers were born between 1945 and 1965. As a segment of Australian society we represent a BIG chunk of our national population, and account for a massive percentage of the nation’s private net-worth.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics people aged 65 years and over made up 13% of Australia’s population at 30 June 2007. This proportion is projected to increase to 25% in 2056 and to 28% in 2101.
As we prepare to transition into retirement & beyond, we are about to witness the greatest transfer of wealth ever in Australia’s history.
However 2010 Australian research commissioned by the Salvation Army from Roy Morgan Research reveals that nearly two thirds of the adult Australian population does not have a Will. The research also shows 40% of Australians aged 25+ have experienced or know someone who has experienced family conflict as a result of a family member not leaving a Will.
Dying without any Will is called intestacy. When that happens, the government of the State where you die will determine what will happen to your assets. This can lead to unintended people (or even the government) gaining ownership of your hard-earned assets.
Many Australians have no idea what happens to their assets after they die, and sadly many rely on the misguided notion that a Do it Yourself Will is sufficient to protect their family and assets.
In June 2010 the Supreme Court of South Australia Court effectively granted an elderly woman’s wish to die.
The woman was in her 70s and confined to a wheelchair. She instructed her nursing home to stop giving her food and drink and the drug insulin, knowing she would die.
She clearly asserted her right to refuse to take food and medication. The Court case was instigated by the Nursing Home in which she resided, because of concerns that her carers might face prosecution for assisting in a suicide or committing other crimes if it complied with her desires.
The judgment is a first in South Australia and reflects a similar ruling in Western Australia in 2009, where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Western Australia, held that Christian Rossiter be allowed to withdraw nutrition & medication, even though the undoubted consequence of this would lead to his death.
Rossiter had become a quadriplegic after a road accident, and retained full ability to understand his condition and to make reasoned choices on his own behalf. His fully functioning mind was trapped within a body which was unable to undertake any basic human functions’. Nutrition was provided to him through a tube inserted directly into his stomach.