Prior to the amendments to the Family Law Act (May 2024), the Court was obliged to consider making an order that a child spend equal time, or substantial and significant time with each parent if an order for equal shared parental responsibility was made. Since May 2024, the Court is now simply required to consider the best interests of the child when determining time spent with each parent.
When discussing parenting arrangements for your child after separation, you may hear the term 'parental responsibility' being used. What does it mean? Why is it important? Does it govern the amount of time each parent spends with the child/children?
If a Trustee or Director of a corporate Trustee of a Self-Managed Superannuation Fund loses legal capacity to make decisions for themselves, then they will no longer be able to perform their duties as a Trustee or as a Trustee Director.
It can be tempting to handwrite the changes a copy of the Will or even on the original, rather than going to the cost of writing a new Will. The issue is whether handwritten amendments to your Will are valid.
There is certainly no problem in making a gift to grandchildren in your Will but there are a number of choices that need to be made, particularly where the grandchildren are young.
A common comment we hear, after separation, is "we have decided to split the assets 50:50 as that is fair". On the surface, this may look fair but delving deeper, it may not be in your best interests and it may not be what the Court considers just and equitable.
With the rising cost of housing, particularly in Sydney, situations of co-ownership of property between multiple persons are becoming more common. In this article, we look at seven scenarios where having a co-ownership agreement in place could be beneficial.
Many people have received correspondence from Revenue NSW with an invoice for multiples years of land tax because they did not know they were liable for land tax and had not registered. Find out if you have to pay and how much you might have to pay.
If your Discretionary Trust holds or acquires residential land in NSW after 31 December 2020 then your trust will be liable to surcharge duty and surcharge land tax if you do not amend your Trust Deed before 31 December 2020.
When a parent dies, it can be difficult for the children to deal with the contents of the home including things like furniture, artwork, antiques, memorabilia and so on. A lot of those things may have little commercial value but often have a very high sentimental value. But you still need to know how to go about division of these items and when you can do it.
One of the first questions a family law lawyer may ask you is 'when did you separate?'. There is a good reason for this question. Time limits apply to family law proceedings for property settlement.