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You've worked hard for what you have and to ensure your assets are protected, you've gone to the trouble of putting them in a family trust. Now those assets are protected for you and your loved ones – for the beneficiaries of the trust. But..
Read ArticleAs a professional trustee, I'm often asked two questions. First, what's the difference between trustee minutes and trustee resolutions and secondly, why are they so important?To answer the first question first, trustee minutes are really notes made of a meeting of trustees and the decisions..
Read ArticleTrustees have now been given fair warning – meet your legal liabilities and run the trust under your stewardship as you should or risk liability and your trust being deemed a sham. We've been advising our clients on this for years but the Commissioner has recently..
Read ArticleBe careful and watch out - there are two new email phishing scams that have been reported by the IRD. Do not reply to them. See below for more details. First Scam Email "We are pleased to inform you that upon review of your fiscal..
Read ArticleMany people ask me what is a professional trustee is, what they do, and what value they can bring to a trust. Often, these people are considering how they want to structure their asset holdings and what sort of return they want to make from..
Read ArticleIt is a common misconception that you have to live with someone for three years or more, and they have to make a direct contribution to the assets acquired during the relationship, before they're entitled to bring a relationship property claim. Possibly this mistaken belief..
Read ArticleLife has a great way of teaching us lessons and one big lesson I've learned is this - if you get the right people on the bus, sitting in the right seats, life just flows a whole lot easier. So, what's this lesson got to..
Read ArticleEver have a property settlement about to go through and at the last minute your professional trustee has held up the game by asking pesky questions like “Why are you buying this?” or “Is this the right entity to be buying it in?” What about..
Read ArticleIn the last couple of weeks I've been honoured to be able to speak at a couple of events, attended exclusively by women. These events focused on issues relevant to women such as maintaining a "work-life balance". I of course spoke about the issue of..
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