Update Family Trust Deed - "streaming" and Bamford

Question: Upon review of your Issue 331 newsletter, and other information surrounding the Bamford decision, our firm is looking at the options around whether family trust deeds should be updated.

Much of the information surrounding this issue is confusing, with different tax lawyers having differing opinions on the importance of both updating the deed & the use of template minutes for from FY2010.

In addition, given some of the costs involved in updating these deeds, it may be difficult to get clients to agree to an update. Even though we, as accountants, may understand the importance, getting the message out to the client is a bit more difficult.

Given your expertise in this area, do you have any information that could assist us in making the decision of whether to go down this road of updating clients trust deeds, and if so, how to get the correct info across to our client base so that they agree to the updates?

I note that in this issue you have outlined the costs, being $165 via LawCentral and $1,100 though Brett Davies Lawyers. Please explain why the great variation in cost between these two options. Given the price choice, most clients would go for the cheaper option, so I think it is important that we have an understanding of the benefits of one option over the other to correctly advise clients on this matter.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Bamford
• discretionary Trust
• family Trust
• distributions
• Division 7a
• Proportional distributions
• Distribution minutes
• Unpaid present entitlements
• company loans
• loan account