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SMSF Deed Update
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$450 includes GST
Strengthen your SMSF’s rules. Protect your retirement strategy and put control levers in place for death benefits. Includes supporting legal documents and our law firm cover letter.
Update your SMSF Deed
The SMSF Update updates the rules of your existing SMSF.
Protect your retirement savings with stronger SMSF rules
Your SMSF holds your retirement savings. Its deed gives the trustees the powers to look after that wealth. An outdated restriction gets in the way of your pension strategy. An unclear death benefit clause gives a disappointed family member something to fight over.
Legal Consolidated’s SMSF Update puts protective machinery in place. It strengthens your fund’s governing rules, supports your retirement strategy and gives your accountant, financial planner and auditor a coordinated set of legal documents to work with.
Give your advisers the powers to carry out your strategy
Your accountant and financial planner work hard to protect your retirement. The deed must support their strategy. Our permissive deed gives your trustees broad powers within superannuation and trust law, with fewer unnecessary restrictions standing in the way.
A ‘regimented’ deed copies detailed legislative restrictions into the fund’s own rules. When the law changes, those copied restrictions remain until properly amended. Legal Consolidated drafts permissive deeds to reduce this unnecessary updating. Review the deed when the law or your fund’s needs change.
To keep everything in order, you also confirm your SMSF’s trustees and members as you build. Change them at no extra charge if you wish.
Your SMSF Update includes all seven documents
- SMSF Deed of Variation — updates your fund’s governing rules.
- Non-lapsing Binding Death Benefit Agreement — directs who receives your super when you die.
- Trustee minutes — record the decisions behind the update.
- Product Disclosure Statement — explains members’ benefits, rights, responsibilities and risks.
- Investment Strategy and Diversification Statement — records your fund’s investment approach.
- Solicitor’s Bank Compliance Certificate — confirms the deed’s borrowing and security powers.
- Signed Legal Consolidated cover letter — confirms we prepared your documents and explains signing and implementation.
One complete SMSF Update package. You also confirm your trustees and members, or change them at no extra charge.
Legal Consolidated’s signed cover letter confirms that we authored your legal documents and take responsibility for them. Read the free sample to see the law firm behind your update.
Legal Consolidated is a national Australian law firm serving Western Australia, Northern Territory, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. You build directly with the law firm authoring your documents.
Put control levers in place before you need them
Strengthen control over who receives your super when you die
Your superannuation is a substantial part of your family’s wealth. Clear death benefit directions make a challenge harder. Your package includes a non-lapsing Binding Death Benefit Agreement and updated deed rules drafted to work together. They give the trustee binding directions about paying your death benefits, including after a change of trustee.
Complete and sign the Agreement in line with the instructions. Your accountant and financial planner help coordinate it with your pension arrangements and estate planning.
Keep your pension strategy moving
Your deed supplies the powers behind account-based pensions, reversionary pensions and moving benefits between pension and accumulation accounts. A reversionary pension continues to an eligible beneficiary after the member dies. These powers give your advisers the legal machinery to implement your retirement strategy.
Support your investment decisions with proper records
Broad investment powers give your trustees flexibility within the law. The included Investment Strategy and Diversification Statement records the approach to managing your retirement savings. It gives your accountant and auditor the documentation behind the trustee’s investment decisions.
For digital assets, read about SMSF investment in cryptocurrency. The investment strategy and superannuation restrictions govern how those powers are used.
Give your accountant and auditor a coordinated legal file
The deed, trustee minutes and supporting documents work together. They record the update, explain members’ rights and responsibilities, and supply the legal powers behind contributions, member accounts and fund administration. Your advisers spend less time untangling inconsistent paperwork and more time looking after your fund.
Start building for free. See the protection take shape.
1. Gather your fund details
Have the fund’s name, address, original deed date, current members and trustees ready, together with details of any changes. Use our editable Word checklist. Keep the original deed and previous variations with your fund records.
2. Start building for free
Start the free building process on our law firm’s website. Answer the questions, read the hints and watch the training videos. Your accountant, lawyer or financial planner is welcome to help you. Work through your answers before paying for the finished documents.
Find your fund details, read the hints and work through the questions at your own pace.
3. Buy, download and sign
When your answers are ready, select ‘Lock and Build’ and pay. Download your completed SMSF Update package and law firm cover letter. Follow the signing instructions and keep the signed update with your fund’s deed history.
Need help answering a question? Start building, read the hints, then telephone 1800 141 612. We help you work through the questions.
Upgrade your deed. Protect the SMSF you have already built.
Legal Consolidated carefully crafts your SMSF Deed upgrade to preserve your existing fund, pensions, accrued benefits and historical concessions. Our drafting applies the fund continuity principles confirmed in Commissioner of Taxation v Commercial Nominees of Australia Ltd [2001] HCA 33.
The ATO argued that substantial changes to a superannuation fund meant it had lost its identity and its right to use earlier tax losses. The High Court rejected that argument. The fund continued under its original deed, amended within its existing powers. Careful drafting protects that connection between your fund’s history and its updated rules.
Keep the evidence behind your fund’s protection
Your original deed and variations establish your fund’s legal history. Keep them with the signed update, pension documents and death benefit directions. Follow our law firm’s signing instructions and the existing deed’s amendment requirements. Your accountant and financial planner then have the legal records needed to support your fund’s decisions.
Stamp duty and lodging your SMSF Deed update
Does your SMSF Deed Update need stamping?
Legal Consolidated’s SMSF Deed Update is carefully crafted to update the rules of your existing fund without transferring its assets. Your fund keeps its assets while its governing rules are brought up to date. The Northern Territory has a separate nominal duty and lodgement requirement, explained below.
This guidance concerns the rules update itself. A separate transfer of fund property, declaration of trust over property or change to ownership interests needs its own duty review. If you change trustees, also check the duty and title-registration requirements for the fund’s assets.
Stamp duty and lodgement in the Northern Territory
A deed updating an SMSF’s rules is subject to Northern Territory stamp duty where the NT duty laws apply. This includes a deed executed in the NT, or a deed relating to NT property or a matter or thing done or to be done in the NT, even if signed elsewhere.
For a trust deed that is not otherwise chargeable with duty based on the value of property, the nominal duty is $20, plus $5 for each duplicate or counterpart. Lodge the deed and the required Stamp Duty Lodgement Form with the Territory Revenue Office within 60 days after the deed is first executed. Duty must also be paid within that period unless the assessment specifies a later payment date.
Postal address: Territory Revenue Office, GPO Box 1974, Darwin NT 0801. Obtain the current form from the NT Department of Treasury and Finance.
See Stamp Duty Act 1978 (NT) s 9, s 9B and sch 1 item 2.
Stamp duty on an SMSF Deed Update in New South Wales
Legal Consolidated’s rules update for a complying SMSF does not attract NSW transfer duty and does not need to be lodged with Revenue NSW for endorsement. The exemption for instruments relating to superannuation is in the Duties Act 1997 (NSW) s 65(10)(a).
A separate purchase or transfer of property is assessed under its own duty rules. The exemption for the SMSF deed does not remove those requirements.
Stamp duty on an SMSF Deed Update in Victoria
An instrument amending the provisions governing a complying superannuation fund is exempt from Victorian duty under the Duties Act 2000 (Vic) s 39. The exemption also covers a fund that, in the trustees’ opinion, will become a complying superannuation fund within 12 months after execution.
A Legal Consolidated SMSF Deed Update satisfying those requirements does not require stamping merely because it updates the fund’s rules. Separate property transfers have their own duty requirements.
Stamp duty on an SMSF Deed Update in Queensland
A Legal Consolidated SMSF Deed Update that varies only the fund’s general terms and conditions does not attract Queensland transfer duty and does not require stamping. Queensland Revenue Office expressly confirms this treatment for variations confined to general trust terms.
A cash contribution or cash benefit payment does not, by itself, attract Queensland transfer duty. A separate transaction involving dutiable property, such as Queensland land, requires its own assessment of duty, exemptions and concessions.
See Duties Act 2001 (Qld) ss 8–10 and the Queensland Revenue Office guidance on trusts.
Stamp duty on an SMSF Deed Update in Western Australia
A Legal Consolidated SMSF Deed Update confined to updating the fund’s governing rules, without a dutiable transaction, does not attract WA transfer duty or require lodgement for stamping.
RevenueWA’s superannuation guidance distinguishes the fund deed and its amendments from a duty-endorsed property acquisition or declaration of trust. It requests stamped copies of fund deeds and amendments where they are dated before 1 July 2008.
A separate transfer of dutiable property or declaration of trust over that property has its own duty and lodgement requirements. See Duties Act 2008 (WA) ss 11 and 23 and RevenueWA’s superannuation duty requirements.
Stamp duty on an SMSF Deed Update in South Australia
Legal Consolidated’s SMSF Update is carefully crafted to update the fund’s governing rules without transferring its assets. A rules-only variation that does not create or vary beneficial interests in trust property is covered by the Stamp Duties Act 1923 (SA) s 71(5)(i), where the original trust instrument is duly stamped. General exemption 30 in sch 2 pt 2 also covers deeds for which no specific charge or basis for charging duty is fixed.
A rules-only update satisfying the applicable exemption does not require lodgement for duty assessment. A separate arrangement that transfers property or creates or varies beneficial interests in South Australian property needs its own duty review before signing.
Stamp duty on an SMSF Deed Update in the ACT
A Legal Consolidated SMSF Deed Update confined to the fund’s governing rules does not attract ACT conveyance duty or require duty lodgement merely because the rules are updated. The applicable legislation is the current Duties Act 1999 (ACT), ch 2.
A separate transfer of dutiable property or declaration of trust over that property has its own duty requirements.
Stamp duty on an SMSF Deed Update in Tasmania
Superannuation trust deeds and variations dated on or after 1 July 2017 do not require stamping in Tasmania. This applies to a Legal Consolidated SMSF Deed Update signed on or after that date.
Historical deeds dated before 1 July 2017 have different stamping requirements. A separate transaction involving dutiable property also needs its own duty review. See the State Revenue Office Tasmania guidance, paragraph 1.3.
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