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Providing tax, superannuation and trust education and precedent products

Customised Products

MGS offer customised trust deeds, companies and other documents tailored to your client's needs.

Succession Trust Deeds

A Succession Trust Deed is one whereby the control of the trust and the distribution of income and capital is restricted following the death of one or more people.

For example, if Mum and Dad are the principals of the trust and have 3 children then the following clauses will protect the entitlements of the 3 children.

Succession Deed Amendments

Existing trust deeds may be amended without duty or the risk of triggering a capital gain to incorporate clauses that provide for succession.

Expanded Class Discretionary Trust

MGS provides trust deeds whereby the beneficiaries are not specifically named but the client is included within the class of beneficiaries named. For example, the beneficiaries may have as a principal all males that attended a certain high school between 1980 and 1995. If the client attended the school within that period the client and their extended family are beneficiaries.

Certainty of Objects

It is important that the beneficiaries of a trust be capable of being identified. It is a concept known as certainty of objects.

The concept of certainty of objects as provided for in the decisions of the House of Lords in re Gulbenkian's Settlements [1970] AC 508 and McPhail v Doulton [1971] AC 424. These decisions established the proposition that trust beneficiaries, also known as objects, must be able to be ascertained. The High Court of Australia in Kinsela v Caldwell (1975) 132 CLR 458 proceeded on the basis that the relevant test was that of list certainty. The court concluded at 462:

"it is sufficient that the provisions of the trust ensure that upon [the date of distribution] the beneficiaries can be ascertained with certainty."

By referring to the principal as all males that attended a certain high school between 1980 and 1995, the trustee would be capable of obtaining a list identifying those people. Therefore the trust is valid.