Genders and Partners

The Importance of Updating Your Will And Estate Plan

Estate Planning, Wills
The Importance of Updating Your Will And Estate Plan

At a minimum, your estate plan includes a Will and some powers-of-attorney. These documents are NOT set & forget. They are snapshots of your intentions at that point in time.

The older these documents are when they need to be used, the greater the risk of a successful challenge to them, when you will not be able to defend your decisions. It’s all about Risk Management.

If you have a proven track record of reviewing and confirming or amending your estate planning documents and keeping them up to date every 3-5 years, there is a much reduced risk of interference with your wishes.

Genders and Partners

What Is A Will Worth?

Trusts, Wills, Wills and Estate Planning
What Is A Will Worth?

Several times each week, my phone rings, and someone asks me the question: “How much do you charge to make a simple Will?”

I always answer honestly, and provide as much detail as I am able.  I try to ask some questions to inform my understanding of their situation.  Some people resist this type of discussion – they think they know what they want, and now are simply shopping on price.

I can’t help those people.  They don’t want what I have to offer.  They aren’t looking for sensible, practical advice.  They aren’t interested in education. They refuse to consider the possibility that they are not asking the right questions. Their minds are closed.

It’s as if they have diagnosed their own illness, and written their own prescription.  They don’t want a doctor to ask them questions or form an independent assessment of their needs.  They just want the pharmacist to fill the prescription with a minimum of fuss and expense.

Best of luck to them, and to their families. I think they’ll need it.

Genders and Partners

Estate Planning for Every Business Owner

Asset Protection, Estate Planning, Wills and Estate Planning
Wills and Estate Planning Adelaide: Estate Planning for Every Business Owner

Every business owner needs some basic estate planning documents, even if you are not married, have no-one financially dependent upon you, or your business is not worth much yet.   You should consider the potential value of your business, and recognise that it is dependent upon you  If you have a spouse, life partner, or children, you definitely need to consider estate planning documents to provide for what would happen if you die or become incapacitated.

Here are the documents you may need to obtain:

Enduring Power of Attorney

This document gives another person power (your agent) to handle your finances in your absence.  This may include paying your bills, negotiating a lease, dealing with employees, contractors & government departments, or working with your bank.  You can give your agent power immediately or only upon your incapacity.

Medical Power of Attorney

Everyone age 18 and over should have this document.  It names & empowers the person you want to make medical decisions for you, if you cannot do it for yourself.  Do yourself & your loved ones a BIG favour, and create this now.

Will

Your Will says who you want to receive your assets after you die, who should handle your affairs upon your passing, and who you want to be a guardian for your children.  This must be formally executed to be valid, typically with 2 witnesses, depending upon state law.  Everyone should have a Will.

Other Documents

Some of you may need other documents, such as discretionary trusts, property agreements, co-habitation agreements, pre-nuptial agreements, irrevocable trusts, special needs trusts, superannuation trusts or life insurance trusts.

Wills and Estate Planning Adelaide- Comfort = Complacency?

Wills and Estate Planning Adelaide: Comfort = Complacency?

Estate Planning, Wills and Estate Planning

As Baby Boomers start to keel-over, we are about to witness the greatest “transfer of wealth” ever in Australia’s history. This segment of society is a BIG chunk of our national population, and it represents a massive percentage of our private net-worth as a nation.

While this is happening, the Gen-X and Gen-Y youngsters are growing-up fast, and realising for the first time that bull-markets don’t last forever.  They now have new burdens of responsibilities to their own kids coming through behind them.  They are suddenly recognising that life doesn’t owe them, and they’ll have to work for what they want.  It will be interesting to see how they cope.  They’ve been raised in very good times, when the equity in our homes unlocked a never-ending orgy of consumerism.  Who needed to save, when debt was so much easier, and capital gains would take care of that.  Why delay gratification, when the latest big-screen home-theatre can be installed today, with payments over the next 10 years?

But now we are formally acknowledged to be in a debt-fuelled recession.  Our economy has been very kind to us for a long time, and people have become used to a certain level of comfort and security – but that is no longer guaranteed.

So how will you look after yourself and your family in these challenging times?  Have you created a fully-integrated estate plan, and reviewed it regularly?  Have you taken the steps necessary to preserve your wealth for your old-age, and to pass your assets onto the people you care about, or are you simply hoping to live forever?

Death & taxes, illness & share-market corrections may be unavoidable … but they don’t have to ruin your family or your business.  Make the effort to protect the people you really care about.  Call Genders & Partners for integrated estate planning in Adelaide and all over South Australia. And do it NOW … before it is too late.

Genders and Partners

Wills and Estate Planning Adelaide: How Much to Live? Planning to Retire

Estate Planning, Pensions and Retirement Planning, Planning for Disability and Incapacity, Wills
How Much to Live? Planning to Retire

I had a dream the other night – it was the scene from Life of Brian where the convicts are lined up before an officious jailer, who is ticking-off their fate on a clipboard: “Crucifixion? Line on the left – one cross each!”

But in my dream-version, I was confronted with a bean-counting accountant in front of a supermarket check-out till, behind which the line branched away into two corridors marked “Live” or “Die”.

I saw myself reaching for my wallet, asking “How much to live?”

In a weird kind of way, this is a very relevant, and thoroughly modern, estate planning question.

Back in the day, men retired at age 65 and women retired at 60.  They received the old-age pension, and generally died in their 70’s.

Now, nobody can afford to retire at any age, because the pension barely covers the cost of the petrol needed to drive to the Department to collect the cheque in the first place, and yet we’re all living to 100! The Queen must be going broke with all the telegrams she has to send nowadays to people reaching their hundredth birthday.

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Wills and Estate Planning Adelaide: Expectation Management

Estate Planning, Trusts, Wills, Wills and Estate Planning

As Baby Boomers, we are leaving the workforce in record numbers.

Expectation Management

This leads to some uncomfortable predictions about the lifestyle we can expect in retirement, and what the Government will do to help us.

In Australia, we have not felt the impact of the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) as quickly or as hard as many other countries (like Greece or Ireland).

But recently, the International Monetary Fund said “The global economy is in a dangerous new phase”, so it is natural to be concerned about our own futures – especially if our most productive years are behind us. It is not easy to recover from a financial reversal when our ability to earn is diminishing with age.

With market volatility in recent months reaching levels not seen since the GFC, it is worth looking at the key factors affecting our economy in this new financial climate.

Populations in most developed countries like Australia are ageing. As people retire, incomes fall and spending patterns must be adjusted downwards. In some countries, economic growth has been extremely low and price deflation has occurred. An ageing population lowers the number of citizens available to work and requires more government assistance in terms of pensions, health care services and other benefits.