Succession Law: Disappointed Beneficiaries, Estate Disputes and Managing the Crossfire - Recorded Online Conference

20th March 2019

Duration: 3 hours

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: Using Alternative Dispute Resolution Strategies to Manage Estate Disputes

No testator wants their estate to end up litigated in the courts and gradually whittled down by legal costs. Can alternative dispute resolution (ADR) be the answer? This session provides advisers with ideas for ways to manage anticipated fights amongst beneficiaries and potential beneficiaries, including:

• Understanding the role of ADR in estate planning: the differences between facilitation, mediation, early neutral evaluation and arbitration

• Proactively managing conflicts through using an independent person to:

  • facilitate communication of testator’s wishes during lifetime

  • reduce disputes after death

• Using family agreements and structuring business succession to allow for dispute resolution options

• Ideas for how to use ADR in blended families, cross-generation structures and family businesses

Session 2: The Battle Lines Are Drawn in Family Provision Claims

Family provision claims seem to be on the rise. A spate of recent high-profile cases have been making their way through the appellate courts, including all the way to the High Court. This session examines these recent decisions, the trends we are seeing and the lessons for practitioners in this dynamic area. This presentation will cover:

• Eligible classes of applicants – who now fits the bill? From de facto to step children

• What factors does the court need to consider?

• Was there a moral duty to provide?

• Did the distribution of the estate fail to make adequate provision?

• Was the eligible person dependent on the deceased?

• How appellate courts deal with family provision matters

• Challenges to findings of fact, exercise of discretion and challenges to statements of law

• Summary dismissal claims and family provision matters

• Recent cases

Session 3: Equitable Remedies and Estate Litigation

Equitable remedies in estate litigation may often be a more appropriate claim than anything else. This session looks at when these remedies may be relevant, what remedies are available, when they should be claimed and covers:

• Equitable remedies and elements

  • Deceased induced them to believing they were provided for in the will

  • Suffered a detriment in reliance on the promise

  • What relief can the court grant?

• Equitable estoppel – when is it appropriate to plead?

• Constructive trusts

• When is an equitable relief likely to be refused?

• Recent cases