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| Photo Credit: Joe Gratz via Compfight cc |
Last week's post focused on the recent case of Re Matsis. This recent decision was one of the first situations where a court permitted a new will to be prepared for someone who had lost capacity where the primary reason for the application was not that the person had no will. Instead, the catalyst was that the beneficiaries were wanting to ensure the appropriate level of commercial asset protection and tax planning would be available.
The decision is particularly important because there are other cases where, in the past, similar requests have been denied.
Arguably, the important factors here included:
- evidence was able to be shown that the will that was in place before the will maker lost capacity was largely seen by him as an 'interim' document;
- the only person who could have brought a challenge against the estate was the will maker's daughter, who indicated in the proceedings that she was independently wealthy and had no intention of challenging the estate;
- the ultimate beneficiaries of the estate (and the people bringing the application) were the will maker's grandsons. While each of them potentially had asset protection risks, none of them were aware of any potential litigation;
- the change to the existing will did not alter any of the provisions in relation to, for example, executorship or any specific gifts;
- while the grandsons lost direct entitlement by the inclusion of the testamentary trusts, they were still ultimately the likely potential beneficiaries via the trust structures; and
- the court accepted evidence that the will maker may well have himself implemented testamentary trust provisions, had he not lost capacity.