With the annual leave season starting in earnest over the next couple of weeks and many advisers taking either extended leave or alternatively taking the opportunity to catch up on things not progressed during the calendar year, last week’s post will be the final one until early 2025.
Similarly, the social media contributions by both the View and Matthew will also largely take a hiatus until the New Year as from today.
Thank you to all of those advisers who have read, and particularly those that have taken the time to provide feedback in relation to posts.
The 2024 edition of this book, containing all posts over the last year, edited to ensure every post is current, indexed and organised into chapters for each key area should be available early in 2025.
Very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year period.
** for the trainspotters, the title today riffed from one of my favourite modern-ish Christmas related tunes, namely ‘How to make gravy’ by Paul Kelly.
Previous posts have considered the impact of separation and divorce of a marriage on estate planning documentation.
As mentioned in last week’s post, the general view has been that analogous situations on the breakdown of a de facto relationship do not have the same consequences.
As last week’s post concluded however, whenever there is a significant change in a personal relationship, best practice dictates that there be an immediate review of all estate planning arrangements.
The case of Blyth v Wilken [2015] WASC 486 is a stark reminder of this principle.
Relevantly, the factual matrix here involved a willmaker who left a final will giving the majority of his estate to his ‘de facto wife’. The relationship between the will maker and his de facto ended after the will was made and around three years before he died. No updated will was prepared.
In deciding that the former de facto wife was not entitled to receive anything under the will, the court essentially applied the same principles that would have been relevant had the couple have been married and subsequently divorced.
In other words, the court decided that the gift was made solely because of the de facto relationship.
Once that relationship ceased, the court determined it would have been the willmaker’s intention that the gift should also fail.
In most respects, the decision here contradicts the generally accepted position and arguably leads to a conclusion that if the willmaker had simply referred to his spouse by her name and had not mentioned ‘de facto wife’, then the gift would have in fact stood.
As usual, please make contact if you would like access to any of the content mentioned in this post.
** For the trainspotters, the title of today's post is riffed from the XTC song ‘Ball and chain’.
