Couples Tax Effective Estate Planning Bundle

Couples Testamentary Trust Bundle

The couple’s online bundle includes:

1. two tax effective 3-Generation Testamentary Trust Mirror Wills;
2. two Enduring Powers of Attorney; and
3. two Medical/Lifestyle POAs.

Each of the documents comes with a cover letter on how to sign each document. Select the blue button above to start building the Estate Planning bundle online. The building process is free and highly educational.

1. Tax effective Wills with 3-Generation Testamentary Trust Wills

The two Tax Effective Mirror Wills contain a 3-Generation Testamentary Trusts. In the first instance, you leave everything to each other. After you both die, you leave everything to the same beneficiaries.

And to the tax man, I leave…

Every year, Australian taxpayers voluntarily pay the government millions of dollars in ‘death taxes’. The 4 defacto death duties are:

1. Capital Gains Tax
2. Stamp Duty
3. Income tax
4. up to 32% tax on superannuation

Are you going to be one of them? Estate Planning ensures that your estate goes to those you care about. Not the Tax Man.

3-Generation Testamentary Trusts

Professor Brett Davies invented Testamentary Trusts in 1994. In 1997 he then invented the 3-Generation Testamentary Trust. The 3-Generation Testamentary Trusts’ additional advantages include:

1. better tax advantages
2. generally, pay no tax on the estate income for 80 years
3. works for three generations: spouse, children and grandchildren
4. discretionary in nature: a beneficiary can choose not to set up any trusts
5. wound up when no longer required
6. each beneficiary gets their own 3-Generation Testamentary Trust
7. the children when acting unanimously can divide up the class of assets differently. Say you have $1m in shares, $1m in property and $1m in cash. One of your children can take all of the shares. The other the property. The remaining child takes the cash. There is no CGT and stamp duty.

32% Tax on your superannuation when you die

After you die your adult children pay 17% or 32% on your Superannuation.  That is a non-dependency tax. It is on your concessional superannuation. Our Super Testamentary Trust, which you get automatically in your Will, seeks to reduce this tax to zero.

What happens if my children divorce after I die?

The Divorce Protection Trust delays or stops capital and income going to a beneficiary who is suffering divorce or separation proceedings. It reduces the Family Court getting its hands on your money when you are dead.

The Divorce Protection Trust sits dormant in the Will until needed. The Divorce Protection Trust activates for the benefit of the married person and that person’s children and grandchildren. It removes that person’s power to control the trust while they are suffering the separation.

The Divorce Protection Trust benefits the current and succeeding generations. This helps protect the assets from the Family Court.

The trusts in your Will include:

1. 3-Generation Testamentary Trusts – reduces CGT & stamp duty
2. Superannuation Testamentary Trust – reduces the 17% or 32% tax on Super going to adult children
3. Bankruptcy Trusts – if a beneficiary is bankrupt
4. Divorce Protection Trust – if a child separates it stops the Family Court from taking your money
5. Maintenance Trust – if a beneficiary is under 18 or vulnerable

2. Enduring Power of Attorney

The second group of documents you are building are enduring POAs. An Enduring Power of Attorney (POA) is a legal document. It allows you to appoint a person to make financial decisions about your assets. The POA deals with your assets e.g. real estate and bank accounts. A POA stops the government from meddling in your affairs.

We are a national Australian law firm. Your POA that you are building online is prepared for your State or Territory.

Your spouse automatically holds both your Enduring and Medical POA in the first instance. If your State does not allow for substitutes (Victoria, Qld or Tasmania) then you have no other choice. In the other States, you can name your own substitutes if mum and dad can no longer look after each other.

3. Medical/Lifestyle Power of Attorney

While your Enduring POA looks after money, property and wealth, your Medical POA deals with your body. Who looks after you, when you cannot? The government, retirement home or doctors? Should they control your body? Do you trust your family more? If so make a Medical POA (Power of Guardianship and Medical Treatment Decision Maker).

Wife trapped in a retirement facility?

Our client had a wife. She is trapped in a high-end aged care facility. She had Alzheimer’s Disease. Our client wanted to get her out. The home said he had no right to touch or move a person. Not even a wife. He rang me in tears. I told him to go home and get the Medical Power of Attorney. He got it. The retirement facility saw it. He got his wife out.

Escape a bad hospital

Our client’s wife was in hospital. The doctors were ‘behaving like Gods, not doctors’. Our client presented the Medical POA. And he moved her to another hospital. There was nothing the doctors could do.

The Medical POA allows you to appoint loved ones. If you lose mental capacity then they decide your:

• personal lifestyle
• where you live
• medical treatment

But only if you cannot make decisions yourself.

You can build lifestyle/medical POA’s for any Australian state:

• Enduring Power of Guardianship – New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia
• Appointing Medical Treatment Decision Maker – Victoria
• Enduring Power of Attorney – Australian Capital Territory and Queensland
• Advanced Care Directive – South Australia
• Advance Personal Plan – Northern Territory
• Enduring Guardianship
• Medical Enduring POA

An enduring guardian makes decisions about:

• where you live, whether permanently or temporarily
• who you will live with
• whether you work
• consent to medical & dental treatment
• protecting life or ‘flicking the switch’ when in a vegetable-like state

Free storage and monitoring of your signed Wills

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

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

Alternatively, you can store your signed Wills with a law firm that specialises in Will storage. There is no cost to you.

Email us and we will let you know how to proceed with storing your Will in that law firm’s safe custody.

Once your signed Wills are put in that law firm’s safe custody they are monitored. That law firm monitors death notices. When you die the law firm holding your original Will uses its best endeavours to get the original Will into your executor’s hands. They also help and support your executors on how to administer the deceased estate and help set up the many trusts contained in your Will. The storage of your Will is a free service.