Wills & Estates

A General Power of Attorney allows you to appoint someone you trust to make decisions regarding financial matters for you while you have capacity to make decisions about those matters.

You may use a general power of attorney to appoint an attorney for a specific period or event (e.g. if you are going overseas and need someone to sell your house or pay your bills).

It’s used while you can still make your own decisions and ends once you lose capacity to make those decisions (unless it is a power of attorney given as security).

An Enduring Power of Attorney allows you to appoint someone you trust to make decisions about personal (including health) matters and/or financial matters for you.

An attorney for personal matters (including health matters) can only make decisions for you when you do not have capacity to make those decisions.

You can decide when your attorney’s power to make decisions for financial matters begins, including:

Here at Pathway Legal, we can assist you with drafting a Power of Attorney and ensure that it adequately reflects your wishes. We will assist you with ensuring that you make the right decision when appointing an attorney/s.

An advance health directive allows you to:

When a person dies, in most cases their super fund will pay the superannuation to the deceased’s nominated beneficiary. Superannuation paid after a person’s death is called a ‘super death benefit’.

If the rules of your super fund allow it, you can nominate the beneficiary for your super, by making a non-binding or binding nomination.

If the super fund rules allow a binding death benefit nomination, you can nominate one or more dependants and/or your legal personal representative to receive your super.

If a deceased person did not make a nomination, or has made a non-binding nomination, the trustee of the fund may:

We can assist you to make or change your binding death nominations.

Our team at Pathway Legal is highly experienced in administering deceased estates, whether it be making an application for Probate or Letters of Administration through the Supreme Court, the set up and management of a Testamentary Discretionary Trust (‘TDT’), property or share transfers or closure of bank accounts.

Obtaining Probate or Letters of Administration is a foreign concept to many people. It is confusing, frustrating, time-consuming and better undertaken by an expert.

We will advise you on whether it is necessary to apply for Probate or Letters of Administration and if required, assist you with making the relevant Application.

Whether you require assistance with making an application for Probate or Letters of Administration or would like us to deal with the estate in its entirety, our experienced team will provide you with the necessary skill required to complete this process, saving you the stress and concern of dealing with it yourself.

If you believe the Will of a deceased estate does not fairly provide for yourself and the family circumstances of the deceased, you can make an application to contest the Will. This is called a ‘family provision claim’ and is sought to rectify Wills whereby the Will maker had a moral obligation towards a party whose entitlement is not enough for their maintenance and support.

At Pathway Legal, we can assist with:

A trust is an arrangement whereby the legal owner of property (which includes real property, financial assets, goods and even businesses) holds that property, not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of another. The person entitled to the benefit of the property is known as the beneficial owner. The legal owner (Trustee) is the owner in name only. Everything that he or she does must be for the benefit of the beneficial owner (the Beneficiary of the trust). The Trustee owes a fiduciary duty (a duty of utmost good faith) to the Beneficiaries.

Our team at Pathway Legal are highly experienced in the area of Trusts. Many aspects of property law and probate law involve trusts and our Principal, Gail Allison’s continual exposure through case management in such areas and her experience as a practitioner ensure we provide you with the assistance you need.