So, you’ve made your Will. It’s been put in a drawer or your lawyer has safely stored it away and now you can get on with life. While it might be current now, your circumstances will undoubtedly change – marriage, divorce, children, start a new business or change jobs… that all has repercussions on your Will.

Everyone, particularly high earning mining and resources professionals with financial complexity, should have a valid Will. Your Will and your Estate Plan (which is separate to, but aligned with it) needs to be updated reasonably regularly. This is to capture any changes so you can ensure those you love are considered, and those you don’t, are not.  In this article I reveal why and when you need to change your Will.

There are personal wishes you will want to observe, but at the end of the day, your Will and Estate Plan are tools that allows your beneficiaries to manage your wealth and assets once you’ve gone.

Wills can be complicated especially for mining and resources people who often live and work overseas and over a lifetime can accumulate significant wealth and assets.

However, despite the number of pages it takes to write your Will, for most married couples your Will will usually be as straight forward as everything goes from one to the other, then if you’ve both passed away, to your children and in turn, their children.

The considerable legal detail that follows, outlines matters such as testamentary trusts and super proceed trusts which provide important options and flexibility for your beneficiaries so they may hold and protect their inheritance to take best advantage of it.

Given your Will and Estate Plan is directly linked to your wealth, it stands to reason these important matters be considered in collaboration with your financial adviser, and due to the tax complexity that usually impacts remunerations packages and ESS common to the mining and resources sectors, a specialist tax accountant.

Here are some of the common personal circumstances that would usually require your Will to be changed:

• You marry or enter into a defacto relationship
• You separate or get divorced
• You remarry or enter into a defacto relationship
• You have children or step-children
• Your children have children or step children
• One of your beneficiary’s circumstances change
• You no longer want to leave anything to a particular beneficiary
• You or your spouse retire
• Your spouse passes away; or
• Your parents or your spouse’s parents pass away.

Some financial circumstances that may lead to you having to consider changing your Will include:

• Your assets change
• You start your own business
• You become a director or shareholder of your own company
• You create a Family Trust
• You create a self-managed superannuation fund
• You or your spouse buy property
• You or your spouse buy property overseas; or
• You, your spouse or one of your beneficiaries goes bankrupt.

As you can see by the rather substantial lists I’ve provided, regularly reviewing your Will and Estate Plan cannot be overstated.

If your Will is outdated and does not take into account your changed circumstances, or worse, if you have no Will at all, then the personal and financial implications to your family could be devastating.

At the very least, your loved ones (in their state of grief) could end up spending a lot of time and money with accountants and lawyers, and possibly locked in legal battles with each other.

Next steps

Check the date on your Will.  If it’s more than 2 years old it needs to be reviewed by a lawyer who will check it’s currency and make recommendations, if required, for it to be updated.

Use the lists I’ve provided in this article as a guide, and in particular, if you have married or divorced, you need to take steps urgently to update any existing Will.

To make a time to discuss your individual circumstances, send us an email or call 07 3220 1144.

This article was originally published by Resources Unearthed here.