Tidying Up the Assets in the Estate Plan - recorded online conference

You can put your staff in the boardroom and watch it there. You can watch it on your computer or on your portable electronic device. All for the same low price.

The conference will be based on our highly successful video webinar technology: there’ll be a chairperson, a panel of experts, presentations and discussion.

Session 1: Taking Care of Business in the Estate Plan

Although the focus in estate planning is usually on the family, it’s important for business owners to give due consideration to passing on their business interests as well. This session reviews the issues that estate planners should raise when discussing business succession, including:

• What are the risks and contingencies you need to deal with?
• What issues arise in the context of total and permanent disability versus death?
• Ways to pass control to remaining partners/business owners
• Managing life and TPD insurance in the succession plan
• Using buy-sell arrangements to deal with succession issues
• The importance of shareholder agreements - and what should be in them regarding estate planning

Session 2: Estate Planning Strategies when the Family Trust is Vesting

When a family discretionary trust vests, beneficiaries’ interests become fixed, and significant tax consequences may arise. The ATO’s 2018 tax ruling on the vesting of trusts makes it clear that once a trust vests, there is no action that can be taken to turn back the clock for tax purposes. This session explores the options available to advisers when clients are living with a trust that has vested, or where a vesting date is imminent. It covers:

• The trust has vested - now what?
• Understanding TR 2018/6 Income tax: trust vesting - consequences of a trust vesting:
  • does vesting trigger any income tax consequences?
  • unwinding an ineffective distribution - what do trustees need to consider?
  • what does the ATO ruling mean for the second generation of family trusts?
• Varying the vesting date:
  • when is it possible?
  • will extension of a vesting date trigger resettlement?
• Planning around an inevitable vesting - directing the trust assets and exploring restructuring opportunities
• Is it time to revisit South Australian trusts?
  • is it possible to convert an existing trust to a SA trust with perpetual succession?
  • the degree of connection required to SA

Session 3: Death Benefit Nominations for Self-Managed Superannuation Funds: What are the Pitfalls?

For many clients, superannuation is their biggest asset after the family home - so the stakes are high. Death benefit nominations can be a useful way of ensuring the death benefit gets to the right intended beneficiary. But, in order to be effective, you need to avoid the common traps and hazards. These are examined in this session, including:

• Does the trust deed allow for the making of a death benefit nomination, of a binding/non-binding and lapsing/non-lapsing nature?
• What does the trust deed require for a non-lapsing BDBN?
• Choosing appropriate beneficiaries
• Is renewal of the death benefit nomination necessary?
• Can an EPOA make a BDBN?
  • issue around conferring benefits in NSW
  • issue re: conflict transaction in Qld
  • re Narumon Pty Ltd [2018] QSC 185
• To bind or not to bind - considerations in the decision as to whether to make a BDBN