Course overview
This course aims to provide an overview of issues in estate planning building upon prior learnings. Review of estate planning legislation and policy provide insight into its role as a professional service safeguarding and transferring a client's wealth in alignment with their objectives. Students will gain understanding of the implications of the changing estate planning legislative environment regarding wills and probate, superannuation taxation, and society's attitudes toward inheritance. Students will gain expertise in establishing adviser engagement, wills probate and succession, taxation of estates, trusts, contracts, responding to family breakdowns and changes in capacity and cognition, preparing them for professional practice.
Course learning outcomes
- Integrate an understanding of estate planning legislation and policy and its role in the financial planning process
- Critically review client requirements and select the appropriate forms required in and available for the estate planning process, including wills, powers of attorney, powers of administration, trusts
- Explicate the implications of capital gains tax for the value of the estate under alternative estate structures, and its implications for distributions to beneficiaries in the case of deceased estates
- Formulate and present advice on the treatment of death benefit entitlements under various superannuation arrangements, and methods to maximise after-tax distributions to beneficiaries of these superannuation death benefits
- Critically analyse the impact of social security, declining capacity, and need for aged care on the estate planning process, and explain its implications for individual clients