Wills, powers of attorney, probate and will dispute claims
In this traditional area, it is Keith's passion to ensure that we put in place for you a solid legal foundation for you, your family or loved ones.
In his many years of practice, Keith has prepared thousands of Wills. He always aims to prepare them to a high standard - but for an inexpensive price - and in a comprehensive way to give you legal peace of mind.
There are many considerations that need to be taken into account to properly prepare a will. Keith delights in preparing a will for you that you will have confidence in, and that can hopefully lead you to the feeling, after you sign it and walk away, that you have soundly dealt with another of life's issues.
To many of those who are reading this, you have a current will - congratulations! The New South Wales government however recently stated that 2008 survey by the NSW Public Trustee found 45% of people in New South Wales did not have a will. If you are one of those people, can we please encourage you to have your will prepared at your earliest opportunity.
Of course, after death, a person's financial affairs have to be administered. Often, a grant of probate or letters of administration need to be obtained from the court. Keith can well handle this. Over the years, Keith has handled many different types of estates. Keith has successfully dealt with difficult issues relating to informal wills, missing wills, complex application of intestacy rules, complex superannuation death benefit decisions as well as more straightforward cases. Keith will give you careful, caring and trusting legal advice and assistance, as well as prompt distribution of estate collections and understandable statements about estate distributions.
Keith also has prepared many many powers of attorney over the years. A power of attorney is a serious matter, and our firm treats it accordingly. We aim to always give you clear simple information about this area, where appropriate to draft documents that are suitable to your wishes and needs and to guide you in the use of the power of attorney.
Keith's litigation experience includes the prosecution of a claim relating to the misuse of power of attorney. From this type of experience, Keith is able to more effectively advise you about entering into a power of attorney, in its use - and to assist you if the power of attorney is misused.
In relation to will litigation, in our opinion, it is becoming a frequent part of our society. In family provision law, there is a wide range of people who can challenge an estate if they can show that the deceased did not make adequate provision for their maintenance education or advancement in life.
These days, it is more likely than not that you will need to consider at some stage in your life whether a deceased person's estate should be defended or challenged in relation to a potential claim. Good advice should be obtained about this subject by anyone making a will, and we can provide this. Good advice should also be obtained about this issue by anyone seeking to defend or challenge a deceased estate. Again, we can provide it.
If there has to be litigation about a will claim, we can assist a person prosecuting or defending a claim. We aim to do so at reasonable hourly rates of charge, and to implement our charging fairly. We always bear in mind that your objective will normally be, in any such case, to try and reach a reasonable settlement about a claim without incurring unreasonable charges. While we cannot control the actions on charges of other parties in the litigation, we always endeavour to ensure that our own charges are fair and reasonable.
Whether it be in preparing a will, administering an estate or in prosecuting or defending the claim, we will dutifully and accountably set about and attend to our legal tasks to assist you complete the matter and hopefully move on with peace of mind.
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