Estate Law Meets The ‘Great Wealth Transfer’

The Great Wealth Transfer is here. But is your estate plan ready for it?

Australia is at the start of the largest wealth transfer in its history. Around $3.5 trillion is expected to move from Baby Boomers to their children and grandchildren over the next two decades. At the moment, the value of assets being inherited sits at about $120 billion a year. Within 25 years, that's expected to quadruple to nearly $500 billion a year.

As the first Baby Boomers reach their statistical age of death in 2027, we're seeing this playing out in real time, in real families, with real estate plans (and often without estate plans).

From where I sit, as a death lawyer, here's what that means for everyday Australians.

More money moving means more at stake in every estate.

Bigger inheritances, concentrated among fewer beneficiaries (Boomers had smaller families than their parents did), means individual pieces of die pie (shares of an estate) are often larger than they would have been a generation ago. Larger shares raise the stakes of getting things wrong, and raise the temptation to dispute things that feel unfair. Less than a decade ago, when a third of an estate equalled $100,000 but the lawyers' invoice was still $10,000, arguing with your sibling over an extra $20,000 simply didn't add up. Now, the lawyers' fees are the same, but the outcome makes litigation feel like a good investment.

An outdated or unclear estate plan is where disputes are born.

It's not unusual to see wills that were written a decade (or more) ago that feature unequal distributions, often at the time the will was written they weren't (eg beneficiary one receives the house, beneficiary two receives cash or other assets that at the time of creating the will were the same or similar value but are now unequal) but years later the picture looks quite different.

Wills that fail to consider special or differing needs of beneficiaries, disinherit people who the willmaker has a duty of care to provide for, wills that make assumptions or are unclear. Outdated or unclear estate plans are a live fuse in a family that's about to inherit big money.

The fix isn't complicated, but it does need to happen before you're gone, not after:

Put your intentions in writing, and talk about them. Unequal distributions aren't automatically wrong. A child with higher needs, lower income, or a disability may fairly receive more. What creates conflict isn't the inequality it's the silence around it. A short conversation now can prevent a five-figure legal bill later.

Check your super nomination today. Binding death benefit nominations typically expire every three years. If yours has lapsed, your super may not go where you intended — and it could go to trustee discretion instead of your family.

Consider a discretionary testamentary trust. Nearly all our estate plans include a discretionary testamentary trust to help distribute and protect assets, particularly if there are minor beneficiaries, vulnerable beneficiaries, or blended family dynamics. A testamentary trust can offer real tax advantages and protect assets from beneficiaries' creditors or relationship breakdowns in ways a simple will can't.

If you're gifting early ("Bank of Mum and Dad"), document it. Is it a gift or a loan? Are there conditions? Undocumented family loans and equity arrangements are exactly the kind of thing that turns into a dispute, sometimes years later, sometimes after you're no longer here to clarify what you meant.

The bottom line

With hundreds of billions of dollars moving through Australian families over the next 25 years, the number of estates that end up in dispute is only going to grow. Whether yours is one of them comes down to decisions you can make now.

You don't require perfect foresight but an estate plan that reflects your actual current circumstances, rather than one that was accurate ten or twenty years ago.

If it's been a while since your will, your super nominations, or your broader estate plan were reviewed, now is a good time to have that conversation with us.