Wills and Estate Planning

What happens to your estate should not be a mystery to anyone.

Most people know they should have a Will. Fewer know what a good one actually involves, or what happens if the people left behind have to sort things out without one.

Akello Legal works with individuals, couples, parents and business owners across Victoria on Wills and the broader estate planning that surrounds them, as well as probate and letters of administration when an existing estate needs to be administered.

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

A Will sets out who receives what, but a well-drafted one also anticipates the situations that catch families off guard, blended families, business interests, beneficiaries who are not good with money, or assets that don't sit neatly inside a standard estate. The starting point is always your actual circumstances, explained back to you in plain terms.

Estate planning

A Will is one part of a plan, not the whole thing. Estate planning looks at how your assets are structured, who has authority to act if you can't, and whether your Will and your other arrangements actually work together. It's less about drafting one document and more about making sure nothing has been left to chance.

Powers of attorney

A power of attorney has nothing to do with dying and everything to do with living. It deals with who can make financial or personal decisions on your behalf if you are unable to make them yourself. It's one of the most commonly overlooked parts of estate planning, and one of the most useful.

Testamentary trusts

Testamentary trusts can be a useful structure for some estates, particularly where asset protection or tax planning is relevant.

Probate and letters of administration

When someone dies, their estate usually needs to be formally administered before assets can be distributed. Akello Legal assists with probate applications and letters of administration, guiding executors and administrators through a process that's often unfamiliar and, understandably, arrives at a difficult time.

Reviewing and updating an existing Will

A Will written a decade ago may no longer reflect your life today. Reviewing an existing Will is usually quicker and less involved than starting from scratch, and it's worth doing more often than most people think.

Life events that may prompt a review

Certain events are worth treating as a prompt to check your Will and estate plan including marriage, separation, the birth of a child, a new business, buying property, a change in your health, or simply not having looked at it in several years. None of these require an entirely new estate plan but they are worth a conversation.

What working with the firm looks like

You will talk directly to the person handling your matter, from the first conversation through to signing. Advice is explained in plain English, fees are set out clearly before any work begins, and nothing moves ahead without you understanding why.

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 actually deals 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

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".