Wills & Estate Planning

A well-structured estate plan gives you peace of mind, knowing your wishes are clear and your family is protected. At Akello Legal, we help you put all the right pieces in place, from Wills and trusts to powers of attorney, medical appointments, and super nominations.

A well-considered estate plan is one of the most important things you can do for the people you love. We help individuals, couples and families put the right documents in place, clearly, carefully and with a genuine eye on the full picture of their circumstances.

We take the time to understand your family structure, your assets and our intentions before we draft anything. The result is an estate plan that genuinely reflects what you want.

Services list

Simple and complex wills
Testamentary trusts
Powers of attorney (financial and medical)
Advanced care directives
Special disability trusts
Business Succession Planning
Superannuation death benefit nominations
Blended family estate planning
Estate plan reviews and updates

Who we work with

Estate planning looks different for everyone. Here's how we approach it.

People making a will for the first time
The first question we ask is not who do you want to leave your estate to? It's how do you hold your assets, and are you sure that your will will actually be able to deal with them?

Couples
Estate planning for couples is not just doing two wills. It's working out what happens on the first death, what happens on the second, how jointly held assets interact with each will, and whether a simple mirror arrangement is actually what you both want.

Parents
If you have children who are minors, your will needs to appoint a guardian, specify how their inheritance is managed until they are old enough to receive it, and consider what happens if the guardian and the trustee are the same person (which can create conflicts) or different people (which can create complications).

Blended families
We are direct about this: if you are in a blended family and you have not had a detailed conversation with a lawyer about your estate plan, there is a good chance your documents do not reflect what you actually want. This is the single area of estate planning where we see the most problems.

Business owners
The most common mistake business owners make is treating their personal estate plan and their business succession arrangements as separate problems. They are not.

People reviewing existing documents
If your will and powers of attorney were prepared more than five years ago or if anything significant has changed since they were prepared, a review is worth doing. We look at the documents as they are, tell you what they currently do, and identify anything that no longer reflects your intentions.

Our Process
What to expect when you come to us.

Step 1: The conversation
We spend the first meeting asking questions. About your family. Your assets and how you hold them. Your superannuation. Your business interests if any. Your intentions, not just in general terms, but specifically. This is the most important part of the process. The documents come from it.

Step 2: What we think you need
After the first meeting, we tell you what documents we recommend, why, and what each one costs. We tell you if we think a particular structure is unnecessary for your circumstances. We do not recommend complexity for its own sake.

Step 3: Drafting and explaining
We draft your documents and go through each one with you before you sign. We explain every clause that matters. By the time you sign, you should be able to explain to someone else what your documents do and why they are structured the way they are.

Step 4: Execution and what comes next
We witness the signing of your documents and advise on safe storage. We also tell you what life events should bring you back for a review and we mean specific events, not "if your circumstances change".