For Financial Advisers

We act as the legal specialist behind financial advice. You give the advice and keep the client relationship. We confirm the documents permit the strategy and prepare what is needed to make it effective.

We are not financial advisers and do not want to be. We give no advice on whether a client should have a fund, what it should hold, or on contribution or pension strategy.

Where advice needs a lawyer

The recurring pattern is a strategy that is sound in principle and blocked, or undermined, by a document:

• The fund deed does not permit it. Deeds differ on what nominations they accept, whether a nomination can be non-lapsing, whether reversionary pensions are provided for, and what the trustee must do on a member's death.
• The nomination is not valid. Binding nominations fail for technical reasons more often than clients expect: lapsed without anyone noticing, witnessed incorrectly, or naming someone who is not a dependant.
• Control of the fund is undefined. After a member dies, whoever controls the trustee decides where the benefit goes. In a blended family that is a predictable dispute.
• The will and the structure disagree. A client with a family trust and a self managed fund often has an estate plan that addresses neither.
• The strategy needs a document that does not exist — a holding trust for a property purchase, a loan agreement for related party lending, a deed update before a step can be taken.

What advisers send us

• SMSF deed reviews and updates, including confirming the deed supports a proposed strategy.
• Binding death benefit nominations, drafted to comply with the deed and the legislation.
• Bare trusts for limited recourse borrowing arrangements, and the related loan documents.
• Estate planning, including testamentary trust wills and how superannuation interacts with them.
• Fund succession — who controls the fund on death or incapacity, and documenting it.
• Family trust work, where the client's wealth sits outside super as well as in it.

The conversation worth having early

The single most useful thing we can tell a client is that their will does not control their superannuation. A death benefit is paid by the fund trustee under the deed and the superannuation law, and reaches the estate only if it is directed there. Clients routinely assume the opposite, and the assumption is only discovered when it is too late to fix.

Whether the benefit should go to the estate or to a dependant directly is a question with a tax answer and a practical one. It is worth having before the nomination is signed rather than after.

How we work with you

• Fixed fees, quoted first, so the client knows the cost before committing.
• You choose the contact point and receive the advice and documents unless the client says otherwise.
• We stay in our lane. Legal advice and documents only.
• Co-branded or white-label delivery where your practice prefers it.

This page describes how we work with financial advice practices. It is not legal, tax or financial advice.