1. Trust Advice

We have a wealth of experience in advising our clients on trust law related issues and transactions, including:

• advising on the operation of trusts
• advising on the tax implications of trust related transactions
• assisting with duty exempt transfers of property between trusts, individuals and SMSFs

2. Trust deed review service

The general consensus amongst trust advisors is that your trust deeds (including family trusts and unit trusts) need to be updated to prevent any adverse tax consequences for both the trust and its beneficiaries.

There are many reasons why trust deeds need to be updated. Trust deeds which contain out-of-date provisions, drafting errors or inconsistent terms can lead to serious adverse consequences such as incorrect tax treatment of distributions, the trustee breachingtheir duties, asset protection issues and beneficiaries being inadvertently excluded.

Trust deeds should not be updated just for the sake of being updated.

However, if you are concerned that the trust deed is out-of-date or contains errors, a review of the trust deed should be undertaken.

Our Free Preliminary Trust Deed Review Service

We provide a free preliminary trust deed review service which includes:

• us performing a preliminary review of your trust deed(s) to determine to what extent the trust deed is deficient for tax law, trust law and commercial purposes; and
• based on this preliminary review, we advise you of the critical deficiencies (if any) and our recommendations as to whether or not the trust deed needs to be updated.

There is no charge for our services up to this point if you do not wish to proceed with our comprehensive trust deed review service.

Our Comprehensive Trust Deed Review Service

If your trust deed needs to be updated and you wish for us to proceed, then we will perform a comprehensive trust review which includes:

• us reviewing the trust deed to determine which provisions need replacing, which additional provisions need to be inserted and whether the trust deed contains any errors; and
• based on our comprehensive review, we will then prepare a deed of variation to update the trust deed on a piecemeal basis to avoid any adverse resettlement of the trust.

Our standard fee for our comprehensive trust deed service is $700 plus GST

3. Trust deeds

We offer a comprehensive trust deed service to help you establish a wide range of trusts and amend the terms of your existing trust deeds.