On 10 August 2017, the Supreme Court yet again made an order in favour of an adult child who claimed for a larger share of their deceased parent's estate, under the family provision laws: Towson v Francis [2017] NSWSC 1034

The family

The person making the claim was one of 3 adult children whose mo...

It is not uncommon these days for couples to travel overseas to get married in an exotic location like Thailand or Hawaii or Bali (or even Las Vegas with an Elvis celebrant!), but care must be taken if a second ceremony takes place back home in Australia, mainly for the benefit of those loved ones w...

The New South Wales Government introduced legislation last year bringing into effect surcharges on stamp duty and land tax, to be payable on residential property purchased or owned by anyone falling within the definition of a “foreign person”.

Who is a Foreign Person?

Section 4 of the Foreign Acqu...

No doubt you have heard about parties to court proceedings claiming “privilege” over certain documents. You may have also seen correspondence from a lawyer labelled “Subject to client legal privilege” or “Subject to legal professional privilege”.

But what does it mean?  Privilege is the right to cl...

It is not uncommon that the most significant asset of a Deceased’s Estate is their home.  It is also not uncommon that there are a number of beneficiaries entitled to a share of the Estate, which will of course require the Deceased’s home to be sold and the proceeds of the sale distributed between t...

Commercial leases typically are for a fixed initial term of, say, 3 or 5 years, with an “option to renew” period of a further 3 or 5 years.  The lease document will note the specific dates within which you must exercise your option to renew the lease.  Usually the date range falls within 3 months an...

Clients often ask us who is entitled to see a copy of a Will (and obtain a copy of the Will) once the testator has passed away.

The answer can be found in section 54 of the Succession Act 2006 (NSW), which provides a list of categories of persons entitled to inspect the Will:

• anyone named in the
...

Blended families and step-families are becoming increasingly common in Australia, creating new and additional estate planning needs and concerns which must be addressed.

What is a blended family?

A blended family is a family where one or both of the partners in the relationship have a child or chi...

A core element of business is the provision of goods and/or services to customers/clients for a price. And it is difficult for a business to be successful if there are difficulties with collecting that “price” from its customers, because this affects the business’ cash flow and ability to fund its o...

For a whole variety of reasons, some clients choose to leave close family members out of their Wills.  Sometimes it’s because of a long-standing family conflict, sometimes because they feel that a particular family member does not need as much financial assistance as other family members.

Anyone wh...

Just because you’re friends doesn’t mean that you won’t run into problems when you open up a business together. The same applies if you go into business with family members – you still need to treat it as a commercial transaction, and put all the necessary devices in place to ensure that the relatio...

A recent Supreme Court decision (Lodin v Lodin; Estate of Dr Mohammad Masoud Lodin [2017] NSWSC 10) has highlighted the rights that former spouses may have to make a claim on a deceased’s estate – particularly if the estate is substantial and the Court finds that the deceased had a moral obligation ...