Attwood Marshall Lawyers’ Legal Practice Director, Jeff Garrett was featured in the Australian Financial Review.
Friday 4 October 2024. Written by Duncan Hughes, personal finance reporter.
Discretionary, or family trusts are used for asset protection, succession planning and tax purposes, such as distributing income to different beneficiaries on lower marginal tax rates.
They can also be used as a strategy to prevent attacks from estranged relatives – the ‘black sheep’ of the family, from seeking a bigger share of the estate.
Trusts are the go-to structure for asset protection and inheritance planning but as more wealthy families are discovering, they’re not bulletproof. Experts weigh in on how to prevent costly showdowns.
“There are many reasons a family member might be excluded from a trust, ranging from drug and alcoholism problems through to chronic gambling or even membership of a cult. Alternatively, they could be unfairly treated victims of a trivial family rift.”
“Sometimes it could be caused because they simply do not get along with the family on some issue, such as a family business,” says legal practice director Jeff Garrett of Attwood Marshall Lawyers.
Garrett, who has regularly represented “black sheep” seeking more money, says a threshold issue is that details of a will or trust are kept secret from them and are only revealed, often inadvertently, by a beneficiary such as a sibling or parent.
“Then they have to fight tooth and nail to get details of the trust,” he says, adding it can often take two or three actions in a state or territory supreme court to win access. “It is not easy, and you can expect a running battle with the other side’s lawyers.”
Read more from our Australian Financial Review article.
