Szabo & Associates News & Updates

A long-running dispute over the estate of billionaire businessman Len Buckeridge has led to the company he founded, the BGC Group, being put up for sale, reports the Australian Financial Review. 

A new report has given an interesting insight into how Australia’s seniors feel about leaving an inheritance for the next generation, and how they intend to balance any inheritance intentions with the need to fund their retirement. 

A recent article in The Weekend Australian (6 January 2018) described it as “Coonawarra’s great family feud” and “a tale of grapes, and wrath; and of brothers, grim”. A story of an inharmonious interaction between a Will and an established family trust involving a complicated set of circumstances that took years to sort out through the courts. As the court pointed out this was partly caused by the testator’s (will-maker’s) apparent misunderstanding “as to what was and was not legally possible”. This emphasises the importance of utilising lawyers of the experience of Szabo & Associates, Solicitors in matters of Wills and trusts.

Trusts are used by lawyers in a variety of different ways. Solicitors will include a trust in a Will where, for example, parents want someone to look after their money for the benefit of their children after their deaths. There are, in fact, several types of trust but the most common are express trusts which include fixed and discretionary trusts. A fixed trust is where the trustees have no choice as to who the beneficiaries are or how much they receive. In a discretionary trust they distribute the trust property as they see fit. However, they must distribute it as they cannot keep it for themselves. For an express trust to be valid there have to be certain formalities adhered to (the ‘three certainties’), the purpose of which is to ensure the trust is properly controlled and enforced.

An interesting inheritance dispute case from the UK has featured in the Australian media this week.