Estate Planning involves making arrangements during your lifetime to ensure that your assets are passed onto your intended beneficiaries after your death in the manner you intended. However, proper Estate Planning requires careful assessment of your assets, your circumstances and your intended beneficiaries as well as any taxation issues to maximise the value of your estate and provide the necessary asset protection strategies.

It also includes planning for the possibility of any future incapacity through the preparation of an Enduring Power of Attorney and Appointment of Medical Treatment Decision Maker.

Estate Planning is important because it helps ensure that you are looked after during your lifetime according to your wishes and that on your death, your assets are managed and transferred in accordance with your goals and objectives, in the most financially efficient and tax effective way to the people you wish to benefit.

Estate planning gives you the opportunity to:

- Prepare an Enduring Power of Attorney to ensure that appropriate financial and personal decisions are made for you when you are no longer capable of handling your own affairs.

- Prepare an Appointment of Medical Treatment Decision Maker to ensure that your future medical and health care decisions are made for you when you are no longer able to make these decisions for yourself.

- Prepare an Advance Health Care Directive to ensure your future medical care is undertaken according to your beliefs, values and preferences.

- Prepare a Will to appoint appropriate executors, trustees and guardians and provide how your estate is to be distributed to your beneficiaries.

- Possibly create testamentary trusts.

- Structure your superannuation to ensure maximum benefits pass to dependants in the most tax effective way.

- Structure the succession of your family trusts and companies to ensure a smooth transition of control of these entities.

We all do.

Failure to put in place appropriate Estate Planning arrangements may result in the distribution of your estate in a manner different from what you may have intended, unnecessary tax liabilities for the beneficiaries and the risk of misuse of assets distributed to vulnerable beneficiaries.

If you become incapacitated or die without having the appropriate documentation in place, then this may create added stress, difficulty and expense for your family and loved ones during an already difficult time.